Just like everyone else, authors face choices. But the ones authors face are just a little bit different . . .
Someone said to me recently, “A lot of people have never met an author!” to which I think, we're just like everyone else. Thinking further on that, I clarify: We're like everyone who faces choices.
Of course, our choices are just a bit different. For example, every day when I arrive in my studio, be it morning or afternoon, choices like these await me:
Flesh out that blog idea I had while brushing my teeth?
See if I got that one email reply I am waiting for, and while I’m at it, just get all the email out of the way?
File and organize the papers and books that have overtaken my desk?
Go ahead and clean out my junk mail, too?
Contact that author I am hoping will review my upcoming novel?
Finish the update to my website?
Work on a monthly newsletter for my email list?
Research that middle-of-the-night idea I had for my next book?
And on and on the author's choices multiply, like Mickey in Fantasia's Sorcerer's Apprentice scene, trying to sweep away the advancing chaos.
But on good days, when I meet my desk, I avert the choices. The single most important thing I can do is open my Scrivener writing app, review what I wrote yesterday, and carry on, word by word, sentence by sentence, other choices be damned.
It will always have a calming effect on me. It will always be the best choice I've made.
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