Practice and Cracking the Whip

Why does it sometimes seem that life is only practice for the real thing? Everything we do seems to be practice. When I awaken in the morning I have to force myself into my running shoes and onto the treadmill, but the rest of the day I think longingly of doing exactly what I am now forcing myself to do. That's practice, it perches in the brain. When I was a cellist, I forced myself to sit down each afternoon and practice for 2-5 hours a day. I hated it. But when I was away from the instrument, I was thinking about it and what I wanted to accomplish the next time I sat behind the polished wood with my bow in my hands. So much of my life is like that...

My writing is similar - an anguish to do but something that I think about all the time when I can't sit at my keyboard. It's enough to drive me crazy. So many things try to get my attention. Art projects run around my head. Stories and plot lines vie with characters to try and get my nod. Different media jump up and down saying "time to bead", "time to paint", "time to draw", "time to work with the kiln". And somewhere in all that cacophony I have to crack the whip and decide what to spend my limited time on.

CRACK! I've been working on character sheets for the characters in my o-fic. It's slow, but once each one finds their voice, then the character starts to live. I still have so many doubts about this novel - whether I have enough plot to make a book out of this, whether the characters are strong enough to hold interest, and whether my own skills are up to the task. But nothing ventured, nothing gained. I'm keeping the whip cracking - exercise in the morning listening to Lynn Flewelling, writing or thinking about the story for the rest of the day, working on my research and background work for NaNo. Will I succeed in November? If I can sit down and give it my best, knowing that most authors have several novels in their bottom drawers that will never see the light, I can feel comfortable at lest trying my best. We'll see...November is still a couple of months away...