Unfinished Business & Pushing Through

I am a little over halfway through my second novel, while I am also putting up my first book, Fish Out of Water, under scrutiny of some peers. The first/current Fish Out of Water will always be up for purchase on Amazon, as long as I’m concerned. It’s a great book for young adults and perhaps even more thrilling for children as young as 10-11, as one lady on Goodreads suggested. My hope is that my works can be enjoyed by any age, ultimately.

It’s good to be awake in the morning. It gives you more hours to the day to do things and be awake and alive and see the sun. It has a freshness like no other part of the day.

I wonder if all artists feel that their work is never done. I wonder if all of us have some next piece or collection to make. That’s my experience. There are numberless books that can fill the world, numberless sights one can capture in countless mediums, and numberless expressions of life through music. How do these things get made?

“What Flannery O’Connor’s College Journal Reveals” by Karen Swallow Prior mentions Flannery’s famour answer that really hits the nail on the head: “Because I’m good at it.”

Scrolling through Karen Swallow Prior’s Facebook page as I tried to find that article again, I saw another insightful remark made by Dr. Prior herself:

“Honestly, I spend more time and stress thinking about things than actually doing them.

When will I learn to stop doing that?

I will have to think about it.”

Same. I have no idea why the world seems to have this problem, when it started, if it’s always been there, or why it’s a thing. Under the circumstances, our best course of action is to simply keep going and encourage each other with what the truth is.

Like O’Connor, remembering that we have a particular talent with skill (and lack of skill) that no one else has can help us push through the days and finish the good work we began.