Today was the day I had agreed to have my Shaker 5 novel finished. The Gifted was one of those stubborn books that got a little long winded and simply did not want to end. The characters must have been having too much fun and didn’t want me to quit on their story. At times in July and June, I felt like this was the summer I was missing. At least it was summer in my book. So I got to enjoy the nice weather with my characters.
But I did finish it. I even managed to get some editing done. Would have liked to have passed through it once more to do a little more word weeding, but I did weed out some of the worst bits of overwriting. And I’ll get a chance to do more.
It could have been that I might not have been in this deadline crunch if I hadn’t done some procrastinating to get started on it back last November. On Sunday I was privileged to go visit the Connections Bookstore in Trinity World Outreach Center in Louisville. That’s me and my friend, Betty Owens in the photo with my books set up for the readers in her church to check out. But in between my time in the bookstore, I went to their church service. Guess what the preacher focused his message on. You got it – procrastination. Sometimes the Lord just sets you down where you need to be.
But these last few weeks I haven’t been procrastinating. I’ve been working with great persistence. And I was determined to get my book sent in to my editor before the end of her work day. I was sitting with Mom today as I have most days this summer, but she knew I had to work and she was napping a lot. I was reading and cutting words and reading and fixing awkward phrasing as fast as I could. Then with the end in sight, a storm blew up. A major thunderstorm. The lights flickered. The lights went out. Oh well, that was okay. My laptop battery was charged up. I kept working. My laptop battery began to lose power. The electric power didn’t come back on in the house. My laptop battery died. My sister shows up at Mom’s. I rush home. We have electricity. Yay! Jubilation premature. We’re in internet doghouse – a state those of us who depend on satellite access with limited download allowances suffer on a regular basis. At our house, we usually suffer it when the grandson has been playing video games. Not this time. Husband must have downloaded something. Paid my get out of the doghouse fee and finally got to hit the send button. Persistence and patience defeated problems.
My problems today were not big problems – just minor obstacles in the way of what I wanted to get done. But sometimes we have major obstacles and boulders of troubles or discouragement that get in our way. So here’s a quote for those times.
“Defeat may test you; it need not stop you. If at first you don’t succeed, try another way. For every obstacle there is a solution. Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. The greatest mistake is giving up.”” (Author unknown)
May you find a solution to your every obstacle. Thanks for reading.