As Time goes By

 

  Three years later I have three completed first drafts and two second drafts (not completed) of MG and a YA novel.

  I currently belong to two critique groups and I am answering Ruth's business emails as her executive assistant in training. I've been with SCBWI-MI for three years, attended half a dozen conferences. I've recently joined the Adcom team, which pretty much organizes the conferences.

  I've been to Texas, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana on Ruth's business, and we traveled to Disney World last year for a vacation.

  I've met authors and illustrators of kid's books, agents and editors. We've managed to pay our bills these past three years, and even buy a car when ours went kaput.

  I still sometimes dream about working at some version of my old job, but my waking dream is of a whole new life of rubbing elbows with the literati and literate.

  I still am not the disciplined writer that I long to be; I am still plagued by fears and shortcomings. I am struggling at the moment with my second draft of "Cayden's Car", fifteen chapters into it and suddenly aware of the lack of motivation for my antagonist and protagonist.

  But I am working out with Ruth every Tuesday and Thursday night (and every other Saturday) in Hapkido. And I am closer to writing than I've been since high school, when I delivered the Free Press every morning, wrote for the St. Paul
and South Lake High School newspapers, and sent in an article to the fledgling National Lampoon.

  I am a lucky guy to have this second chance.