Balance

Balance: It's not just for those uncertain re-riders trying to stay on excitable TBs anymore.

As I have briefly mentioned on this blog, in addition to riding and working full time and exercising to avoid gaining 20 pounds in cookie weight (mmmm cookies) I also write fiction. This was always a huge part of my life and I enjoyed some small successes in the past, but for the last few years I haven't done much. Well, I've been writing -- and my short stories are getting better and better -- but I haven't submitted to any journals for a few years now. And I keep planning to begin work on a new novel, but have had several false starts. I'm intimidated, which is a foreign feeling for me -- in the past, I'd whip out a novel in a 3-4 months even though I knew it likely would never be good enough to get published. I wrote for the sake of practice and learning about the craft and prepping myself for the time when it's for real. Maybe I feel I have enough practice and it is for real now, so I freeze up. Who knows.

Anyway, I just got word that one of my fellow writers from college sold her first novel. And I'm jealous. I admit it.

This woman is an amazing writer and even though I haven't read this manuscript (or even know its title yet), I know without a doubt that she totally, totally deserves it. No question. But even so, I can't help being jealous, which I know is a perfectly normal human reaction. She and I were often neck and neck in college, winning similar writing contests, sending our stories out to the same magazines, and so on. I honestly never doubted that she would one day succeed. Of course, I hoped that I would, too.

After college, we completely lost touch and our lives took very different turns. She took on the life of an academic, getting her PhD and then teaching lit classes. I went into the terrifying "real world" right away and started working. At first I toyed with the idea of getting an MA or PhD in literature and then teaching at the college level, but thankfully I realized that wouldn't be right for me.

Even though I don't think the academic path was necessarily for me, I'm jealous for this other writer's choices because she has more time. She doesn't even know what a 9-5 office job is, or the pressures and crap that come along with the corporate work experience. She has had every summer off. She has had more time to write, and even when she's not writing fiction she's been absorbed in the academic world, which is a completely different place and much more conducive to writing. Sometimes I feel I let myself forget that I'm a writer in part because I'm constantly surrounded by people in the "real world" who don't understand what that means. Sometimes even I don't understand it.

So anyway, she has a book deal, and now I'm questioning how I spend my time. I work all week, of course. My job isn't really that horrendous when it come to time -- I can come in the office late if I want, or take a long lunch, or sometimes work from home, and if I really need to leave at 2:30pm on a Tuesday, I can make it happen. Of course, sometimes I find myself working at 2:30pm on a Sunday because I have a huge project I need to finish. And my position is sometimes stressful and high-pressure, so I find myself thinking about it outside of the office. And that is just not healthy, in my opinion.

Then there's riding, which has been taking up more and more of my time. Just looking back at some of my entries on here that detail my braiding practice and worrying over the show makes me exhausted. Is it possible to work full time, lease or own a horse, AND try to make a writing career for myself? Is there only room for one major activity outside of work? (And let's not even think about the people who work full time and have kids and manage to hold down a writing career or take care of their horses...that is beyond even my level of comprehension, which is why no kids are on the life menu at this time.)

And my writing has definitely dropped off within the last year -- I'm writing less and less, with some productive spurts mixed in. Thankfully, I have a writer friend who lives just down the street from me, and lately we've been getting together twice a week just to sit across each other in a place with no Internet access and write. Without those writing dates, I probably wouldn't be writing much at all. That's sad. I don't expect to ever be a best-selling novelist or a phenom or anything like that, but I do believe, based on my past experiences and work, that I could be publishing. Short stories, at a minimum, and a novel, if I really get my act together and give it the time it deserves.

What it comes down to is this other writer, the one with the book deal, didn't sell her book because she got her PhD and she has summers off or perhaps more time to write. She succeeded because she made it happen. She sat down at that desk for who knows how many hours and pounded out a book, and then revised it and made it shine. That is what I need to do. I feel like I know what it takes. So why aren't I doing it? And is riding what is interfering with this goal, or is it me...not managing my time correctly, being a little lazy, or just not being disciplined enough?

All I know is that right after posting this, I am going to print out one of my finished stories and submit it. It's been a long time since I submitted anything, and I'm realistic to know the first few (or first dozen, realistically) times out it will probably get rejected...but I need to get back in the game. So here I go. Wish me luck.