“Hello, my name is Katherine and I am a writer.”
Room: “Hello, Katherine.” (This is where it would be great if Sarcastro’s nickname for me had caught on. Because it’d be cool for everyone to say “Hello, Kitty.” Oh well. Perhaps in another life.)
I’ve been committed to writing for pretty close to a decade now. Before then it was something I did to amuse myself. Then for a long while it was something I did against an inevitable someday. Now that I’m turning it into an actual home business with product and goals and business plans I have a renewed sense of excitement.
My mom worked in a grain elevator and I think I have her genes in me. It isn’t enough to just plant seeds and tend the soil. It isn’t even enough to harvest the crop. I’ve got to see it through, take it to the place where the crop meets the corporation.
My poor husband is getting texts and emails each day where I report my writing time and words written. I’ve told him he’s my Writers Anonymous sponsor. I think he probably just deletes the emails, but it doesn’t matter. I like the finality of being able to say “I’ve done what I set out to do”.
What would the Twelve Steps of WA be, anyway? And is writing really a disease or more of a shared delusion? Am I powerless over writing?
I should be able to answer these questions instead of letting them hang there like an unfired Chekov’s Gun.
I don’t know if I want to answer them, though. I think it’s better that they remain things to ponder, koans for creation.
Perhaps the hardest thing is that I’m endeavouring to keep the writing to an hour a day. There are days when I could do more, days like today where I feel like I could give the book a full eight hours. Not having those hours in me is the worst part about illness. I’ve come to a gentlemen’s agreement with the pain, to a grudging understanding with the side effects of the medications. But it’s this loss of time that frustrates me the most. I think that’s one of the reasons I’m currently 
enamoured with the idea of self-publishing. I don’t have a lot of time in my days and I like the idea of getting my stories out there as quickly as I can.
That isn’t impatience or some other defect of character. That’s an acceptance of my limitations and an embrace of the mechanisms God has put in place to allow me to deal with those limitations effectively.
I have fewer spoons, so God has given me an ice cream cone.
