At the start of Tuesday morning, I looked at the next three days on the calendar and thought I'd have a good chance of getting some quality writing time.  My daughter would be in school and there were no appointments on the calendar.  We were supposed to get some snow on Tuesday and a big storm was forecast for Wednesday, but it's February in the Upper Midwest.  Big storms aren't uncommon.

Tuesday morning went pretty much as planned.  I dropped my daughter off at school, went to my coffee shop, and changed Chapter 12 as needed.  It was snowing pretty hard all morning, so I drove home, ate lunch, and then did some Internet research in the afternoon.  Then things got interesting.

Overnight nearly two feet of snow hurled by 50 mph winds drove snow drifts up to five feet high.  School was cancelled on Wednesday, and the day was spent outdoors trying to clear doorways, driveways, and cars that were almost completely buried by snow.  Wednesday night my daughter came down with a cold.  Thursday morning it was worse, so she stayed home from school.  The temperature had dropped down to single digits and the wind chill was -15.  I drove to the grocery store around 10:30 in the morning, and when I came out my car would not start.  The "intelligent key system" – the car has a push button start – went haywire and the electrical system turned on but wouldn't start the car, and then wouldn't turn off.  I called AAA for a tow, and they informed me that due to the blizzard the day before, they were overwhelmed with calls and my tow truck would be there anytime between now and five hours from now.  And, would I please stay with my vehicle.  Nothing like sitting in a car when it's -15 wind chill for five hours.  So I called my wife, who was also getting sick, and she and my sneezing and coughing daughter drove to where I was.  Lo and behold her key for my car wound up resetting the system and starting the car.  I immediately drove it to the dealer as she followed me, canceling my tow on the way, and dropped it off.  We drove home and ate a late lunch, and it was now 2:00.  I didn't do anything the rest of the afternoon but household chores and taking care of my sick girls.

So between Wednesday and Thursday, days I had planned to get between 8-10 hours of writing time, I spent exactly 0 minutes writing.  These things happen.

The two days were not without progress on the writing front, however.  I was able to get two things done that needed doing, while I was physically occupied with chores.

First, I emailed a cousin of mine who has experience in the military and asked him a question about the rank and uniform details for a character.  Those sorts of details must be accurate or you lose credibility instantly with a reader who has the knowledge that you don't.  He emailed me back with the exact information I needed, and now I can incorporate that into the story and know it is correct.

Second, while shoveling out my car I thought about the next chapter I'm going to write, specifically what one of the characters is going to be doing with Faye.  This character has only a minor role in the story, but is a client of Faye's and is going to help her discover something important about Luc, who is a primary character.  Faye will be sessioning with this client and I needed to decide what his background was as well as what he was going to be doing with Faye.  I got both things thought through while moving a couple of feet of snow around by hand.

So even though I wasn't writing, I was thinking about writing and got something done.  Like Teddy Roosevelt said, do what you can, where you are, with what you have.  Good advice.

Finally, when things don't go as planned it is easy to get frustrated and feel like you've been stopped cold, losing all your momentum and requiring a solid fuel rocket booster to get going again, whenever 'again' turns out to be.  It's useful to have something to focus on at times like that, because it is absolutely true that things are never as bad or as good as they seem.

My touchstone for times like that is to remember one of the final scenes from the movie "Cast Away", a personal favorite.  After being wrecked on a lost island for four years, Tom Hanks' character returns to civilization through a random set of circumstances only to find (among other things) that the woman he was to marry has married someone else.  He's describing to a friend how awful it was to lose her twice – when he was wrecked without hope of rescue on the island, and then again when he miraculously did return only to find her married to someone else.  The lines I remember most went something like this:

"I was going to die on that island.  But then the tide brought me a sail… I'm so sad I don't have Kelly…  But I know now what I have to do.  Keep breathing.  Because tomorrow the sun will rise.  Who knows what the tide will bring in?"

And that's just it, isn't it?  You don't know.  You make your plans, you try to execute them.  And life has its way with you, the way Mother Nature shows who's boss by hurling two feet of snow at anything you may have had 'planned'.  All you can do is deal with what is in front of you, do what you can, where you are, with what you have, and keep breathing.  Because tomorrow the sun will rise.  Who knows what the tide will bring in?

Have a good rest of your week.  Read something today.  Anything.  Thanks for reading.  -Jon