Rhythm of the Pen

This is a bit of ROW80 check-in and a lot of ruminating on my writing life.

I'm struggling a little bit this week.  I'm trying to find my rhythm with writing a story a week, which is quite a different rhythm from writing five days a week on the same story.  I found last week that after I finished my first story and posted it on Wednesday, I had a hard time jumping into a new story right away.  So Thursday and Friday didn't see a lot of writing, although I did come up with the story idea I wanted to write for this week. (They did see some checking on other ROWers blogs, so that goal went well.)

Now, fairly early in the day, I am getting this post written in draft form so that later I can concentrate on finishing this week's story.  But I'm not sure it's going to get done today, and I'm feeling really anxious about that and my decision to take on this challenge.  It's longer than I thought it was going to be, and I got a late start on it, and I'm feeling wobbly about the whole thing.

But just now as I was writing this, I realized that getting it done late can happen sometimes.  Just because I don't get it done and posted on Wednesday doesn't mean that I'm just going to walk away from it and not finish.  I can just finish it and post it late.  It will still be done, at least, and that's the really important part (although this one is going to be an even rougher first draft than last week's story, I think).  I may have to adjust the schedule now and then when things are hectic or a story is a little longer.  But I don't have to give up just because I miss a deadline.  Huh.  How was that so hard to realize?

I'm still going to try to get the story finished, typed in, and posted today.  But if I don't, I'll get it posted tomorrow.  I can do that.  It's my blog, I'm pretty sure I am allowed to do that. What a realization!  So actually, I'm going to go ahead and post this check-in and then start typing in what I do have.  Then, if all goes well, after my class this evening I'll finish it up and put it up in a second post.

Now that wasn't so hard, was it?

EDIT 8:45 p.m.

Here's the link to this week's story for 52 Stories:

Week 2: Synchronicity or Spirits in the Material World (with thanks to The Police for the idea)