WITH REGRETS

By Delle Jacobs

We writers are a strange lot. We seem to live for the Hell of writing. Well, perhaps that is not entirely true. We live for the beauty of writing, but we seem to be willing to give up any semblance of normal life for the privilege of going through Hell to reach the ultimate beauty. Worse, we know we will never reach the perfection we seek, yet we slog through the fiery pits anyway.

We have many regrets for what has been sacrificed. We wish for more time with our families, that they wouldn't so willingly give up the time. Maybe if they pushed a little harder, insisted we quit banging away at the keyboard long enough for a trip to the mall just to be going to the mall, maybe we wouldn't feel so guilty. But they don't. No, they push the other way. "Write, write, write. Publish, publish, publish."

Our friends are often too understanding, too. Even those who don't also write. They smile patiently when we forget and want to talk plot points instead of golf games, trips to the beach, or even the weather. Only rarely do they say, "How about some lunch instead of flogging the keyboard?"

We never have enough time for gardening, or all the crafts we used to do. Being a creative sort, most of us have a highly decorative past. But now, the story calls, the deadline we must meet. We'll garden later. We'll clean the house a little less thoroughly, or put it off a little longer to finish that chapter.

And once, we read everything we could find. The backs of cereal boxes were as compelling as the hottest best seller. But now piles of books to be read stack up in double rows on our bookcases, in deep piles beside our beds, fill our family rooms and guest rooms, and would line the halls and bathrooms if our families didn't put a stop to it. But we never seem to find the time to get them read. We buy each others' books, and those, well we swear we'll get to them someday. We miss reading. Really miss it. So many books. So little time.

Some of us long for more travel, not as research, but travel because we want to experience the world. But we spend our travel and vacation money going to conferences where we work at becoming better writers and toil over making connections that will make our writing life more productive. We don't have the time to travel just for fun.

It's time we've lost. Time to be all things to all people. Instead, we must squeeze the Superwoman role in with our writing, and when we find it can't be done, we find ourselves wanting in the balance. Guilt for writing. And guilt for not writing.

Not too long ago I had a dream about my death. It was all okay, for some reason; we all die. But then I got all the way down to the cremation. I jumped up, screaming. "Wait! I'm not ready to go yet! I haven't finished writing the book!" And the dream is symbolic. I will never be ready to die, for there will always be something I have yet to write.

Perhaps that shows just how deeply the Writing Sickness infects us, for that is my biggest regret of all: that I cannot live a dozen lifetimes so I could have enough time to tell all the stories that are within me.

To read last month's Writer's Life article, click here

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