Meg Dowell Writes

I’m really starting to wonder when things around here are going to calm down.

It doesn’t matter that I spent three straight days studying for that test, shoving everything else aside and narrowing my focus primarily to cellular respiration and its opposite, photosynthesis. This weekend still means few breaks, schoolwork, and long lists. There’s a speech to be written. Four chapters of biology to conquor. Five sections of math and a test on Tuesday. More scholarships to fill out and essays to perfect. And as of this moment, I have forty-eight hours until my week starts again. There’s no weekend anymore. There just happens to be two days in the middle of every week that I don’t have class.

I put One Summer on hold. I may have terminated its existance forever. It wasn’t flowing; I didn’t have time. I didn’t have the energy. The writing was terrible, the dialogue was worse. I was forcing myself to make words, something I promised myself I would never do, and it showed. So as much as it hurts, as sad as it makes me, I’m putting it away. This is one of the exceptions to the novel-writing rule that says you should never abandon your novel-child. Ever; no matter what.

Imagine a child that is born and can’t survive. The doctors have done everything they can. They have used all of their technology and known techniques. A thousand prayers have floated up to Heaven. If it is kept alive, it won’t be happy. It won’t really live. It’ll kind of just lay there. No voice; no purpose. The parent(s) want to keep it alive. It’s their child. But why do that if it will only be miserable for years and years to come? Why not send it to a happy place, where it can run and play and breathe without assist?

A difficult decision. But it’s what’s best for the child. I mean, novel.

I am a parent who has lost a child. I am drowning in a period of mourning. I’m doing my best to focus on other things and to keep my mind away from the truth. But when I’m on a study break and think about how long it’s been since I’ve sat down to write, and I realize there’s nothing left for me to work on, my heart hurts. I know it’s hard to understand, if you’ve never gone through this. I know it seems silly for me to cry over a novel I barely even started. But I had dreams. That novel was supposed to go places. And God said no. So I took the shortcut off my desktop. I haven’t opened it in over a week.

I am greiving. But I’ll survive.

Love&hugs, Meg♥