Well, it turns out that it wasn't as easy as I thought. Mostly because my kids started school, soccer season started, and my schedule got a little out of whack, which led to me slacking off in my writing. Almost the entire month had gone by before I knew it and my first draft still wasn't finished. And I only had one day left.
I took a day off from my day job and got to work. I started at 5:00 am and took very few breaks, mostly just to eat or take care of my kids in some way. My two oldest kids are in school so they were taken care of for the majority of the day, which just left my little one. Luckily her friend came over to play and they played fun little games for hours and were completely enthralled in their play, which left me free to write.
I tried telling myself that I could just finish the draft up that week and it wouldn't be a big deal. What were a few extra days? So what if those days were in September instead of August? It really wouldn't make that much of a difference, would it?
In the long run, it probably wouldn't make that much of a difference. But psychologically, I needed to finish that book in August. I needed the win. So I decided to go for it.
I got more and more excited with each chapter or part that I finished. I started to think that I might actually be able to reach my goal! It was pretty exciting. Then came the point when I had finished all of the chapters of my book and had only the epilogue and prologue to write...and I finally knew what I wanted to put in the prologue! At that point I was really excited.
The prologue had been bugging me for the entire book. On The Watchers it had been one of the first things I'd written and I'd known exactly what I wanted to put in it. But on this book the prologue had eluded me, until right at that moment. It was as if the thing that I'd been searching months for suddenly jumped from behind the wall and surprised me. It's a great moment for any writer.
My two older children came home at this point and the atmosphere changed slightly. Instead of my pleasantly tranquil environment for writing I was now under a barrage of questions while trying to finish my epilogue. I was checking homework, directing activities, and listening to stories about how so and so did such and such, all while sitting at my desk and desperately trying to concentrate. (As a side note, I really couldn't tell you anything about so and so and the such and such that they did but never tell my children that. I'm pretty sure they thought I was listening - it's okay to be a subpar mom for one day right?)
Among all of this chaos I managed to finish my epilogue but then I had to get my son to soccer practice. I rushed him to practice and raced back home and back to my chair. I was so close!
It was a race against the clock. Could I finish the prologue before soccer practice ended? Could I finish the first draft of my book and meet my goal before the clock reached 6:50? Well let's just end the suspense, I did. I did! I finished my book and was able to pick up my son from soccer practice with a huge smile on my face. It was a great moment!
And my kids may have had whatever they could scavenge for dinner that night (which strangely enough consisted of cereal, grapes, and kidney beans - my kids love kidney beans, what can I say?) but as we sat around the table, I was able to tell them that I'd met my goal and finished my book. And they were genuinely excited for me. And then my oldest immediately went and retrieved his list of New Year's Resolutions. He wanted to see what his goals were so that he could work on them. I guess he'd seen how happy meeting one of my goals had made me and wanted to feel the same way. And of course, Monkey See, Monkey Do, so pretty soon all of my children were looking at the goals they'd made at the beginning of the year and planning on how they were going to achieve them.
So maybe that day I wasn't as crappy of a mom as I thought.
