your story is waiting for you

More than a year ago (perhaps two) I had an idea for a novel. A really cool novel. A genre-breaking novel. A let's-drop-the-categories novel. A novel I'd have given anything to find a swatch of time to write.

That isn't my life. Time is elusive.

Every now and then, on the sly, I scratched out a page or two. Then weeks would go by, months, of utter dormancy.

It's no way to write a novel, right?

But, for me, it is. It has to be.

Yesterday, and the day before, I found an hour to return to this book. What struck me is how much I had taught myself about the story and the way it was getting told throughout the months of not writing a word. I'd solved problems I hadn't even articulated to myself. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, I thought, as I read over my own shoulder. Then: Here. This part. That's right. Do more of this.

Today the corporate work swirls once more. Today and tomorrow and perhaps for much of December then in through the spring semester at Penn there will not be much novel time. And yet, progress has been made, the book comes more clearly into view, my mind keeps telling some part of my mind the story, as it waits for typed-out words.

I write all this, put it here for you to say: If time is running short on you, do not despair. Somewhere in your head, your story is waiting for you.