It’s funny how life works. Sometimes, the first step is just the hardest.
Good news and Bad news. (Always end with good)
The bad is while I’ve learned few things in life are as simple as they seem, sometimes it is what it is. Like most expats during COVID, homesickness is real. They recently opened a Five Guys here, and it seems I’ve already spent the GDP of a small island nation there.
Europe, is still suffering month six of a second COVID lockdown, since letting the kindergartners in the school next door would likely be handling the EU vaccine rollout more efficiently…
The good news is the world sees light at the end of the COVID tunnel, my family and friends are all healthy, and my finished Western is in the hands of beta readers. Maybe it’s the pandemic, but it took over forty years for me to fulfill the goal of publishing a book. I’ve now written two and a half more in the ensuing four months. Maybe that’s a lesson for other parts of life.
The Western was fun and hard. A lot more complexity and research was needed. Reading and writing can teach you a lot about the past. The current project is a serial killer thriller set in Europe. This will be a real challenge because of the villain. In the other books, the adversaries where either animals, or simply not excessively fleshed out. In the thriller, the villain is a prominent character. The challenge is making him “interestingly evil” if that’s a term.
A few friends who are working on their own first books, have asked me for tips. This is nuts because, Cormac McCarthy is a real author, I’m just a dad who writes in his free time. I’ve noticed a few things that help me.
1. Get up, with no social media, and write. – As a morning person, dawn is often the only free time with life’s obligations, and energy is higher after a night’s rest and of course coffee. They key for me then, for at least an hour, I avoid all social media, email, etc. They are all great but can easily hijack your time. Usually an hour later, I’ve got something written or edited, by the time my little one is up asking for breakfast.
2. Do something hard or unpleasant first. I watched a graduation talk given by a SEAL officer on forcing yourself to do something hard every day. As I get older, it seems habits are everything. Basically, reward yourself with something reasonable already in your routine, for sticking to the new habit you want. I’m an unabashed caffeine addict. My morning coffee is sacred. I told myself, no morning writing, no coffee. It actually worked. Now, I feel bad on days, there is no writing or editing. So now it’s no German vocab practice, no writing. Anyone who has tried to get their head around the word, “rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz” at 6am realizes the latent beauty of German. Now if I could just start eating less Five Guys and running more…
Finally, there is a real chance flying back stateside in a month is my best chance at getting vaccinated before the fall. When you consider this insane pandemic has kept us from visiting loved ones, in the good old USA since Thanksgiving 2019, this notion of flying west, is exciting.