(day 15): an unusual Saturday

I'd have normally given up Saturday and Sunday as non-writing days, but after yesterday's epiphanies about making rules that serve life and not the other way round and about approaching writing with a mindset of creativity and positivity, I made my way to the writing desk several times this morning for multiple, brief writing stints.

And I finished a short story I had been working on! So, yay to me!

And wow, how many myths I used to believe in! That I can't write if I have only 20 minutes of time, that I need an uninterrupted hour or more to do the work, that I need life around me to be completely sorted and great so that I can focus on writing and not on life-related stuff, blah ... blah ... blah ...

Well, today I managed to step out of the myths, and that's a real win in my book.

I realized something about truths today. That we need constant reminders of them.

In this world full of distractions and doubts, it's very easy to forget what matters to us. We can easily fall prey to doing what's easy and shows quick returns, instead of sticking to doing what we care about for a long period of time.

It all takes time.

And boy, am I in a terrific hurry to get somewhere real fast, to this imaginary place where I think I'd be able to say, "I've made it at last."

That's a myth that life has debunked for me many times, and that's a myth that Rachel Friedman debunks in her book And Then We Grew Up.

That's a myth that Dean Wesley Smith debunks in his blog post today.

This is one of the amazing offshoots of doing the writing challenge alongside Dean. He has taken to writing many encouraging and motivational posts more often than before. These nuggets of wisdom keep offering me those constant reminders that I seem to need on this journey.

Apparently, Dean used to write very frequently about having a long-term mindset back in the early days of indie publishing and many people have said that those teachings and motivational posts completely changed the way they wrote and published.

I've been following Dean's blogs for only a couple of years now, or perhaps not even for that long. So I've often felt as if I had missed the boat, missed all the fun that happened back then in the early days.

If I were to be honest with myself, I think it is a good thing that I did not come to the industry back in the days of the gold rush. Given the mindset I had back at that time and even until a little while ago, I'd have definitely crashed and burnt. I'd have become an 'art monster', an artist who is a jerk of a human being, as Rachel Friedman puts it.

I realize now that where I am, which feels like the complete beginning, is the perfect place for me to be in right now. I have all the time in the world to keep practising adopting a positive mindset and ensuring that my writing remains fun, for me and for the reader.

In fact, the truth is I've been in that place of "I've made it at last", only to realize that I still kept looking for happiness and lost a lot of things in the downslide from there – money, relationships, and my sanity too.

So here's to learning from past experiences and moving ahead wiser yet also feeling very optimistic and with a whole lot of joy in my heart.

There's only the writing, and making a career and a living from it, which takes time. A hell of a lot of time.

Well, isn't it a good thing then that I get to do writing alongside parenting? Because in the world of parenting, everyone knows that the days are long but the years are short. Very, very short indeed!