No Complaining Allowed - Kerry

I ponder the pitch that I will be making to various agents at the Willamette Writer's Conference as I drive down the road, buy groceries at the store and shuttle my children to and from various locales.

Then I start to feel sorry for myself because I haven't thoroughly covered the entire subject enough. Even though I have a month left to prepare, it's as if being preoccupied with said subjects wasn't a good enough excuse for not having the entire pitch down on paper in detailed outline form.

I sink deeper into moroseness.

Until I go to the Ashland Farmer's Market on Tuesday and notice the blind man buying carrots, his social security card dangling in the sunlight from his wallet while he asks the clerk,
"How much is it?"

I regress to my parents' standard phrase:

"Someone is always worse off than yourself."

Later in the day I am shocked as I notice a clerk at the grocery store as a former business owner who lost her business to bankruptcy.

And then there's the conversation I have that evening with my mother about my godmother, who is lying in a hospital bed after suffering a stroke, still unable to speak.

But finally, there's my fellow writers at Lithia Writer's Collective, who know how to listen to all the moaning and turn it into a smart peice of writing after listening.

So about that pitch, or that b****.

I'm not going to worry about it anymore.

As Nike would say,

"Just do it."

No complaining allowed.

Goalposts: Willamette Writer's Conference - Kerry

I set the goal, now I have to run the race. The race of preparing for a writing conference amidst three kids home for summer, camping trips and carpooling for various lessons is intense.

"Mommy I'm ringing the doorbell why aren't you coming?" yells my four-year old.

I tear myself away from the computer screen and walk to the door. She is standing on the front porch holding a neon pink purse and wearing a brown and pink flowered sundress. Her luminous blue eyes look at me with a mixture of frustration and impatience. I hesitate, torn between two loves - my children and my writing. I hug her and smell her chlorine-tinged swimming lesson hair.

Somewhere in the eye of the storm, I pull out my computer and write furtively. Often that means I am the only mom at the outdoor pool sitting in the shade with a nerdy laptop. Other times I find myself writing early in the morning as the kids eat their breakfast. Yesterday I wrote as I sat in the car waiting for Max to be dropped off from boyscout camp.

Whatever it takes, writing something, anything, every day makes me feel better than taking the self-flagellation that follows if I don't.

Plus, I have a goal, which is partially motivated by the fact that I have actually paid for the conference and partially motivated by raw fear. I do not want to be caught empty-handed in the long fifteen minute session that I am scheduled to pitch my writing ideas to agents. I hear those fifteen minutes can get really long, and I have three separate ones with three separate agents.

So back to my goal I go. Nothing like a little distraction and fear to help motivate my inner writer. Whatever it takes.