Only Half an Hour

“‘It is only half-an-hour’– ‘It is only an afternoon’ — ‘It is only an evening,’ people say to me over and over again; but they don’t know that it is impossible to command one’s self sometimes to any stipulated and set disposal of five minutes — or that the mere consciousness of an engagement will sometimes worry a whole day…” ~ Charles Dickens

I had a dentist appointment today at 1:30pm. Just a routine cleaning, only an hour’s worth of time… but yes, it pretty much “worried” if not the day, at least the whole morning. I also had to go grocery shopping, and set up a lunch date for Saturday…

And so I plead those as the excuse for why I couldn’t get settled into writing this morning. Well, plus searching for my special plant trimming scissors which had been misplaced… and a half- finished card with a new technique I was trying out beckoning to me from the desk where I’d left it in disarray. I was afraid to proceed because it seemed hard and I didn’t know if I could do what I was intending.

I told myself I didn’t need to mess with that and should go write. And then suddenly just decided to DO It. Of course things went awry, and then I had to figure out how to fix it… I did… I like the finished result… but…

I wasn’t writing. Perhaps because yesterday I reached a similar stage with chapter 5, which is almost done but has been like pulling teeth: sentence by sentence I’ve pressed through it. Working through a paragraph, thinking it’s done, wandering off to do something else, coming back, discovering it’s not done after all, repeat that sequence a number of times, all the while, uncertain that the direction the words are taking me is the one I really want to go in. My mind says it’s all logical and the only course that makes sense. It’s just not what I had originally in mind. And I’m not sure if I like it…

I keep asking the Lord, “Is this really the direction I’m to go in?” He doesn’t seem to be answering.

So it’s easier to think about the dentist and fiddle with the card…

1 thought on “Only Half an Hour

  1. Susan Donetti

    Boy, do I know how frustrating that can be! The sentence by sentence part. Not the fiddling with the card part! 🙂

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.