Achievement Unlocked

My first job in Arizona was at a day-care center. For years afterwards (and still sometimes, for reasons) I would tell people, “I can handle eight one-year-olds for eight hours alone. I can do anything.”

Yes, it was a constant round of diaper checks (every child had to be checked every hour, and changed if needed which they usually did need) but I kept eight one-year-olds happy and healthy for eight hours a day and that is a confidence builder right there.

When I worked at Taco Bell, my brag was that I could make a six-pack of tacos, from taking the first shell to closing the box, in twenty-six seconds. And it would be right. Some people over-packed the meat, or under-packed the cheese, but my tacos would be exactly the way the company wanted them made. And I’d do it in twenty-six seconds despite the fact that I couldn’t get all six shells in one hand like some of the “steamers” I worked with. Two was the best I could do, and still move fast.

Outside of Taco Bell, that’s not really a very useful brag, though. I stuck with the “eight one-year-olds” bit in other places.

Then my dear friend moved from Ohio to Arizona, and I drove her truck. “I drove a seventeen-foot truck from Ohio to Arizona by way of shudder Oklahoma,” I would say. “I can handle this!” For whatever value “this” was. By the way, that’s a seventeen-foot bed. The truck is twenty-three feet.

And I didn’t hit a single curb in one thousand, nine hundred and ninety-five miles, thank you very much.

That’s a pretty good one. Still not as good as “eight one-year-olds for eight hours,” though. Seems like these things are kind of area-specific. If you don’t make tacos for a company, you might not realize how impressive it is to make a six-pack in perfect proportions quickly. If you’ve never driven a seventeen-foot truck when you had to sit on a pillow to see out the windshield, you might think that wasn’t so hard. And if I tell you, “I wrote a book in a pandemic!” maybe you’ll have an idea how hard that was, and maybe you won’t.

Pretty much everyone recognizes how hard the child-care thing would be, though. Perhaps because we’ve all met a toddler or two.

That’s okay, though. It’s all good. I know what I did, and I’m the one in need of confidence.

Some writers have just plowed on with the productivity, I know. But a lot of us—A LOT OF US—have been having a really hard time. We’re kind of trained towards empathy and being in someone else’s shoes, you know? You can’t write other people well if you’re not be able to get into their heads and hearts. That’s made this whole pandemic thing, with folks losing their grandmothers and their elders and driving family members around looking for a hospital to take them and selling off everything to get a tank of oxygen…

Yeah.

To be clear—I don’t think the writers who have plowed on are feeling this pandemic any less. They just have some combination of traits, possibly including the absolute necessity to trade words for food, that has allowed them to continue to be productive.

Me? I’ve been struggling. Let me emphasize that. STRUGGLING. I want to help all the people. I want to stay away from all the people. I had to go to work, I had to go to the store late at night or very early in the morning, and I didn’t want to do any of it, or anything else. Especially anything involving both effort and thought.

Thinking is bad. All I wanted to do was hide from thinking and the news and germs, and I couldn’t do that. I had to go to work, and I had to write a book.

But I did it. It took me forever longer than it should have (nine and a half months! I could have had a—yeah, no, let’s not even go there.) but I did it.

I wrote a book in a pandemic. And I can’t wait to share it with you. Just as soon as I edit it a couple more times. And also give it a name.

Oh, and I have to name the series, and come up with a title, and think about a cover, and…

I’m…just gonna go hide under my bed a bit.