My Toy Car

So I had a great idea for a book.  I wanted to write it.  I set aside some time from my other work to jot down a few paragraphs.  But I had one problem.

This is how I felt through most of a typical day, and especially at the end of it.  I have six kids, and the requisite household chores and field trip forms and homework monitoring and tending of emotional wounds that comes with six kids, not to mention the marriage that made them.  I also had a part-time job as an editor and ghostwriter.  I also like doing things like singing in choir and reading for pleasure.  I didn't feel like I had time to pour into a book of my own.  It felt like this:

I felt that pouring time into writing for myself was like jumping off the side of a cliff.  Give me a parachute or not - that's still scary.  I felt like making the space in my head and my soul to nurture a book start to finish would knock me off the precarious balance I had struck into a spinning lack of control, where goodness knows what would happen next.  That's when I read a post from Kate DiCamillo.

She was sharing some writing advice from a fellow author who talked about his toy car.  In the mornings, this author would do the paying work, the book his publisher expected.  But in the afternoons, he'd write for fun. He'd play with an idea that may go somewhere or not.  But the point was that he played with his ideas.
I can do that, I thought.  I can take just a little bit of time from ghostwriting to play.  I won't finish this book.  I'll just play with the idea.

My toy car is now Dawn Hyperdrive and the Galactic Handbag of Death, which is available on Amazon and at Smashwords.  Give it a try at my website!