How I pick myself up again after a missed writing deadline

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Spoiler alert: she is not going to meet her own deadline

I am writing this after I have given myself some time to go through the grief cycle that my book is not ready yet to be published - and I will not be able to meet my own pre-order deadline.

I feel all the horrible feelings of shame, embarrassment, failure, frustration in sharing this. That yet another 'best laid plan' and deadline is being missed. I feel angry that my dream - my stretchy goal and ambition - of having my cozy mystery published by this birthday is yet again not happening.

I also know that missing out/changing even my best laid plans is part and parcel of the reality of living with chronic illness that is the result of living with an incurable, progressive, whole body damaging disease (endometriosis) and continually dealing with the side-effects on the merry-go-round of trial and error in medication and 'management'.

Picking myself - and my manuscript - back up

With my working through this grief cycle - and being brave enough to put this 'failure' out here - I'm focussing on how I can continue to work towards publication as soon as I can.

I'm trying to identify again where I can shift habits or mindsets or draw more boundaries to make my writing my priority.

It's not easy with a body that rebels and also being a mum at home during school summer holidays.

I'm not setting another 'deadline' as yet; rather I'm focussing on making sure I am working on the edits and rewrites and production work on as many days in the week as I can.

Writing myself a new job description

And in what might be a bit of a left-field turn, a period of journaling and writing out my frustration led me to write myself a job description - to ensure that I continue to treat my writing as my job, rather than 'something mum does' that can be pushed down the list.

I might share that in another blog post.

For now, this is simply a holder, a note to say - my book is delayed, but will be published.

Let's keep writing.

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