Tough Week
Heard of bad hair days? Yeah? Well, we had a bad server week. The server crash on Tuesday caused me to spend every spare minute of my time answering the phone, republishing websites, working on the server, stuff like that. It made for a very stressful week.
I make about half of my living designing and hosting websites. That way my church doesn't have to worry about how much they pay me. It's a good thing, but I do get very stressed out if there are server problems. VERY stressed out.
Did I mention how stressed out I can get? You don't even want to know.
So anywho, writing was out of the question last week. My Middle Man cannot function unless he is in a good mood and able to achieve a zen-like level of absolute focus. I wrote about my Middle Man once before. I've paid close attention to the writing journey over the last couple of years, and I've discovered that I have to bring three very different persons to this task.
Creative Guy comes up with ideas. For whatever reason, my mind is never short of ideas. But Creative Guy is very messy. He drops sentences, thoughts, sketches, whatever, and then disappears. I currently have about 150 essay ideas and partial essays sitting around on my computer.
The Middle Man is absolutely the most difficult one to manage. I generally have to bribe him or lie to him to get him to come to work. The middle man is the unsung hero. He has to take the mess left by Creative Guy and organize it into something possible. It's dreary work, if you ask me. There is no end in sight. Just hours of moving paragraphs around, pacing, cussing, and trying to figure out where this thing is going. And since I rarely have several hours in any one day, this work gets spread out over time. I often have to work on several things at once just to manage the time.
Now if I can just get him focused and interested, Middle Man can do some amazing work. And sometimes he breaks open the essay with a fantastic idea of his own. But alas, he is also the guy who wants to read or watch a movie or do things that give him more immediate gratification. And he is also the part of me who works on websites and sermons and does all the things that bring money to my family. And writing definitely does not bring in much money. If I told you how much I've made as a writer, you would laugh and laugh. Then you would get all serious and tell me I am out of my mind to do this sort of thing.
Sadly, I don't really have any choice in this matter. I have to write or my heart will start to die. I'm serious. If I can't write, my heart will be like a sad little boy walking to school every day alone with no lunchbox, no hope, and nothing to look forward to. I think my heart WAS dying, and that's why I started Real Live Preacher in the first place. So, for better or for worse, I have to write now.
But anyway, the server troubles are mostly behind me, so I got Middle Man out of bed early this morning and put about three solid hours into the second half of my grandfather's story. Middle Man is just about done, and that's good news because I have an OUTSTANDING Closer. Seriously, he's like Mariano Rivera. If I have an idea down, and Middle Man has cleaned up the mess and put everything in order, then my Closer is MONEY.
The Closer is my editor, you might say, and for whatever reason I love that part of writing. The piece has form enough to get me excited, and I do enjoy polishing. I go over it and over it and over it until I can read it all the way through without having to stop because something doesn't sound right or because some sentence here doesn't quite fit with some sentence over there. Plus I know I'm close to being done, so it's exciting.
When Closer is finished, I get to publish it online, and I always say the same thing out loud - "Publish that Mofo!" It's a secret little ritual of mine, and that is the sweetest moment of all.
Writing, it's not just a job, it's your whole life!
rlp
3:38:13 PM 
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