Life Enhancement # 44: Finish writing the book that I have been working on for 14 years.
Did you ever have a moment where life is at a all time high? Then in an instant the moment plummets to its lowest? And just when you think all is lost, another instant themoment seems to even itself out? I call these moments “Yeah-Boo-Aha” moments.
Here is an example. The moment started afterspending a good four hours setting up lights, battling shadows, checking angles, capturing 38 minutes of raw video, sharing laughs and stories. I was feeling pretty, pretty good! Yeah! I started the upload of all the video fromthe camera to the Mac. With a few trials and errors, all the videoswere uploaded (I will confess I am not really a Mac user) I thought. I took one final checkof the camera! The discovery sent panic. No sight or sound of the videos in the camera’smemory! I looked for the videos on thecomputer. Folder was empty. No evidence of the hours spent. Gone. BOO! Stunned and scared, my mindraced for plan B. How could I be so arrogantto think I had the expertise? Did I mention I am not much of a Mac user? Why didthis happen? How could this have happened? What am I to do? We would have to redo all that work. Time that was filled with moments now simply erased between the transferfrom the camera to the computer. My co-partner on the project laughed, but I wanted to cry. But then the changing instance came as a voice inmy head. “Look here!” it said. And I did! I looked in one more folder on the computer. There was the 38 minutes, lined up in little segments. Aha! How silly I was to doubt myself. In those quick moments, taking only mere seconds, Lifetaught me a lesson which is to never give up!
There has beenmany reasons that it has taken 14 years to finish a novel that I have in my head. A novel which resides in spiral notebooks and on several computers. So over the last several days, I started to get excited. I tried to take these 14 years of ideas and transfer them to one central location. I was still even excited about the concept. But then things got little foggy. I realized that my life was so different when I was in my thirties. Where was I going with this characters? What was the story line? Where was the ending? I became very frustrated. I started to second guess why I would commit to finishing this book. A novel that probably no one would read let alone even care about. And then, an ad popped up on my monitor: Aha!
I got it, the moment where there was this sign. A sign (ad) that anyone can write a novel and win! Aha! Now every night, I write 5pages. I know I won’t be able to submitmy novel this year, but I can tell you that I am going to enter it nextyear. And really what is another year?
Maybe you have a novel that you have written and is just sitting there in a box or in a folder on your computer. Take the chance and submit it. You may just find that you have a “Yeah-Boo-Ahh” moment! And if you do, let me know, because if you do I will promise I care and I will read it.
