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The WordPress Daily Post topic for today is “Pick something you don’t like and choose to accept it.” Usually, the things I choose to accept are the things I can’t change anyway. Seems pointless to say I choose to accept them when no choice is actually involved, but I like to feed my delusion that I’m more in control than I am. For instance, I choose to accept that I will always be a short, knock-kneed woman with pasty white skin and freckles rather than a statuesque, busty, bronzed beauty with Betty Grable legs.
But, if I had to choose to accept something I really had some degree of control over, in keeping with the spirit of the prompt, I would choose to accept that I will never write my great American novel. Don’t get me wrong. I have started it. After many, many drafts, I have finally written the first sentence. It’s a fabulous first sentence. In fact, it’s so good it makes me want to read the rest of the story. Alas, it does not make me want to write the rest of the story.
Writing is such hard work. You have to be terribly disciplined. When I had a full-time job, I used it as an excuse for not writing. I didn’t have the time, I reasoned. Now I have the time, so if that were really the reason, I would have been a writing fool for the two and a half years I’ve been retired.
The truth is, I just don’t want to work that hard. Plus, I never was very good at dealing with rejection. Both of those things make a writing career pretty much unattainable. I just feel bad, though, wasting that terrific first sentence. Oh, and I have the ending in my head and it’s poignant and deeply satisfying. It’s all that in-between stuff that eludes me. Guess that’s sort of important.
Coming East 
Wow. I do know where you are coming from. I have some chapters done on a new one and a completed old one that I’ve given up in a drawer somewhere. And I can’t get the energy to be disciplined. I’ve kinda reached the same conclusion. Nice post.
But you are so far ahead of me! You need to keep going.
I’ve had the first line of my novel for years; in fact I’ll share it with you, “Becoming a billionaire really wasn’t that difficult.” Like you, I even know the ending; also like you, it’s the middle stuff that is difficult. Great posting.
Is yours based on a true story?
I’ve just read three of your posts and I think you’re a wonderful writer. If you don’t feel like writing your novel, that’s one thing. But if fear of rejection is the only thing holding you back, please look into self-publishing. You no longer have to ship your manuscript off to a traditional publisher and wait, bleeding and sweating by the mailbox, for their decision. There are other options. I hope you’ll think about it.
Thanks so much for your kind words. I’m actually on the board of the Hampton Roads Writers, and we’ve had workshops on self-publishing, but I would still have to have a manuscript. Think I’m getting lazy in my old age! At least blogging is short and quick, and I get to publish it immediately.
Oh and in my imagination you do look like Betty Grable, only the hair is differently styled.
Glad you see the resemblance!
Hello again Susan.
Well I have always written and my friends used to say things like “Please change my name when you write your novel or story” “Make me young and athletic in your story” and such like.
Well many years ago, 25 to be exact, we moved from the Big city into an idyllic spot.
The house overlooked one of the sounds (like a fjord) and I had a room all set up that opened out into the garden and was only a short walk to the beach. If ever I was going to write my story this would be when and where. Well life intervened. During the short time (9 months) that we lived there, my husband was hospitalized and then required full on caring for a while; the house was always full of visitors who came to see husband and had to stay; and on and on are the excuses.
So now I write blog posts.
You had good reasons for postponing your novel. And I consider blog writing to be valuable writing, too. It certainly is immediate.