The Writer's Struggle

It’s been way too long. I know this. But every time I would sit down to write a blog, all I could think was, “It’s been so long. I’m ashamed I waited this long. I don’t want people to catch on to how long it’s been so I’m just going to wait some more.” It’s silly, really. Life gets busy and it’s an easy excuse to skip a day of writing, which turns into a week, and then a month. Not anymore; I am writing. Because Grandpa deserves his story to be heard and I certainly won’t be the one to hold him back.

Writing is hard. And harder when I know what’s on the line—doing justice to the seventy eight years my grandpa has lived. Courtesy of one of my coworkers at the dog daycare, I’ve been reading magazines and blogs about the craft of writing. There’s a gratification that comes from hearing about other people who are facing the same hardships. The biggest struggle for me is just sitting down and writing. I read a fantastic article from an advice columnist in which a woman had written about not being able to sit down and write and dealing with insecurities. The columnist, along with a wealth of other useful advice, wrote, “Writing is hard for every last one of us. Coal mining is harder. Do you think miners stand around all day talking about how hard it is to mine for coal? They do not. They simply dig.” Such a simple principle. So I’m digging in.

Right now, I’m still editing. We have seventy eight years of stories to put down on paper before we’ll know how to begin to make a book out of it…which brings me to another labor: patience. It takes a long while to document 78 years of stories. But I have also learned a seemingly minor detail could be the thread that ties the whole thing together. Believe me—we won’t be leaving anything out. Luckily, Grandpa and I are trucking along and I couldn’t ask for a better subject. So stick around, I’ve got some good tales to put on paper.