A is for Apple

Why not start at the beginning?

I started a blog just before I turned 50 called, “The Better Half of My Life.” Started— that’s my MO. Another beginning without a middle or an ending. But I’m not here to complain about my lack of stick-to-itiveness (my mom’s favorite word). The point of mentioning that blog is to talk about Time. When I wrote The Better Half, I was truly excited about the time that lay ahead. I still am. But now 12 years have passed since I started that blog, and I look back trying to figure out where Time goes. How, when, and why Time goes.

New years often feel like “this is it, this year I’m going to ____” New beginnings. Are there old beginnings? Of course.

Old Beginnings are when you keep trying. Keep starting over. Old beginnings are “Begin agains.” Maybe intentions in January didn’t get the momentum you thought they should. February is still a beginning month. Start again.

Writing is full of Begin Agains. At least for me. Maybe for you? We can call it editing, or revising, or reinventing. Call it Polly, and it’s the same thing.

I’ve mentioned here before that I’m writing a menopausal Nancy Drew. I start it, finish it, revise it, start to submit it, think of a new idea, consider a new approach, try a new point of view, and I begin again each time. I’m about to do that again. Begin again. A friend once told me that I’m rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic when I do that, but I don’t like to think of my books as the Titanic because we all know what happened to the Titanic, and I’m not talking about the love story.

But shouldn’t I just cut bait and start submitting? I want to, because I think of this as the “how” Time passes. I’m not getting to The End, so Time just passes right by waving as it goes. Time is inconsiderate in that way. But I wave back, and feel a little bad being left behind, and a lot bad that I can’t finish in Time. But I want my story to be the best it can be. Yes, I straighten some misplaced deck chairs that don’t really matter, like the chapter lengths, but there are also important considerations like the new idea that menopause should be a Superpower. It is!

This is how I work. Somehow though, through all the re-starts, revisions, edits, rethinking, reinventing, I have started, finished, and traditionally published two other books. Maybe I could have finished those sooner. But that’s the Why of Time—we work with what we have and Time shrinks and expands while we tumble inside it. Maybe I could have written many more books in that time, a lot of authors do, or maybe I could have written none. A lot of authors do that too.

I often tell myself I could have written so many more books had I only just been more productive. That’s the How of Time.

I’m not productive if I think of the When—time flitting by like cartoonish calendar pages in the wind. When I picture the Why’s—hours and days of Begin Agains, those cartoonish calendar pages dropping slowly, or forgotten and not torn off until the calendar is cobwebby and out of date, that’s when I remember that I have enjoyed the process so much that I forgot all about Time. And that’s the real Why of why I write. That lost sense of Time.

Sometimes I write these posts and I have no idea where I’m going. Maybe these posts are my own musings about what’s on my mind. This one was fun—to find out that the loss of time has two sides. A double-entendre, if you will.

Now, I have to go back to the beginning and see how I did.

I hope you are writing and thoroughly enjoying the process. Don’t worry about Time. Some days it’s kind, and other’s it’s Passive-Aggressive. We have to accept Time for the way it is. Until it isn’t.

I’ve got one seat left on the couch for the France Writing Retreat. So much fun, exploration, writing, eating, dancing, living the better halves of our lives in France! Join me, won’t you?