I'm on the train on my home from a marketing conference I was attending for work. The conference was good, lots of ideas to take back to the office, but do you know what the biggest thing that I learned during my three days away was? This writing thing never gets any easier.
Normally it's a real struggle for me to find time to write. I work a full-time day job, I have a two hour commute round-trip, I have two young kids and a husband that I want to see when I get home and I still haven't figured out how to avoid activites such as grocery shopping, bill payment and laundry and still keep my family alive and living indoors.
I was sure that these three days away - no commute, no kids, no husband, no grocery shopping, bills or laundry - were going to turn into a little mini writing retreat. Sure, I'd have to go to the conference during the day, but I imagined that as soon as the sessions were over at 4:30 each day, I would curl up in my hotel bathrobe, pull out my laptap and all but finish my novel in the hours of uninterrupted writing time that would lie ahead.
Ya, not so much.
Turns out that the words are just as hard to come up with - for me at least - when I'm in a quite hotel room for hours as they are when I'm sitting at the dining room table with my kids playing "How Hard Can We Hit Each Other Before One Of Us Cries And Runs To Mommy To Blame The Other One Even Though That Was The Game" around me.
It was a revelation for me.
I suppose it's discouraging to learn that there isn't in fact any magical writing spot where the dam breaks and the words come pouring out like water. But it's also nice to know that I'm not missing anything by sitting at my dining room table, struggling through the din of my normal life to find each new word.
Because, in all honesty, those nights alone in the hotel room, my husband and kids hundreds of miles away? They were lonely and awful. And I can't wait to get home, tuck my kids into bed, fall asleep beside my husband and sit down tomorrow at my dining room table, amidst all the chaos of a regular Saturday afternoon.
Normally it's a real struggle for me to find time to write. I work a full-time day job, I have a two hour commute round-trip, I have two young kids and a husband that I want to see when I get home and I still haven't figured out how to avoid activites such as grocery shopping, bill payment and laundry and still keep my family alive and living indoors.
I was sure that these three days away - no commute, no kids, no husband, no grocery shopping, bills or laundry - were going to turn into a little mini writing retreat. Sure, I'd have to go to the conference during the day, but I imagined that as soon as the sessions were over at 4:30 each day, I would curl up in my hotel bathrobe, pull out my laptap and all but finish my novel in the hours of uninterrupted writing time that would lie ahead.
Ya, not so much.
Turns out that the words are just as hard to come up with - for me at least - when I'm in a quite hotel room for hours as they are when I'm sitting at the dining room table with my kids playing "How Hard Can We Hit Each Other Before One Of Us Cries And Runs To Mommy To Blame The Other One Even Though That Was The Game" around me.
It was a revelation for me.
I suppose it's discouraging to learn that there isn't in fact any magical writing spot where the dam breaks and the words come pouring out like water. But it's also nice to know that I'm not missing anything by sitting at my dining room table, struggling through the din of my normal life to find each new word.
Because, in all honesty, those nights alone in the hotel room, my husband and kids hundreds of miles away? They were lonely and awful. And I can't wait to get home, tuck my kids into bed, fall asleep beside my husband and sit down tomorrow at my dining room table, amidst all the chaos of a regular Saturday afternoon.
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