Hey, guys, I promise I do
achieve milestones in my writing! I just don't measure them (which was last week's topic) nor do I especially celebrate them (this week's subject). Maybe I should peek ahead to next week's writing prompt and see if I'm going to go three-for-three!
Since writing is like breathing to me (as in something I must do if I'm alive), and I don't celebrate breath #1,500,000, neither do I do anything special to commemorate word #50,000 or #100,000 or whatever. Actually this is not strictly true, as far as the breathing. I came within 30 seconds one morning of being among the 4000 people who die every year from choking on food. I taught a friend to
perform the Heimlich maneuver on me AS I was passing out (and remember I couldn't speak at that point because I was getting no air).Luckily he kept at it after I was unconscious and literally saved my life. I will
always remember that first breath of blessed air when the food popped out and I regained consciousness. But so, ok, that was clearly a very exceptional breath.
I did a lot of incoherent screaming after "the call" from Angela James in 2011, that Carina Press was going to acquire my first-ever book to be published, "Priestess of the Nile," because that was a lifelong dream coming true. But we really didn't particularly celebrate. Dinner at Red Lobster maybe? My daughters are both writers as well, one of whom was a published author several years before I got there, so we all understand the process, the challenges, the hurdles...and, folks, writing is one very long process. With lots of ups and downs and since I do it for the love of writing, I don't really feel the need to reward myself along the way.
Now if and when one of my books ever gets made into a movie, okay THEN we will have massive celebrations, I promise.
I do sometimes indulge myself in one thing though, when I've had something cool happen. Like Allison earlier this week and her desire for the LEGO Death Star, it's not necessarily a one-for-one, oh I reached this goal, so I can reward myself with that thing. What, you may ask, is my item of indulgence?
Lunch at the Ritz earrings. I ADORE long, jazzy earrings and I have jewelry boxes full of them. Normally I'm pretty much "see it buy it" about cool earrings but the most elaborate LATR earrings get pricey, especially if you're trying to win a pair of the vintage, discontinued ones on eBay. So sometimes to incentivize myself I'll focus a pair of their top of the line earrings and say to myself, when you accomplish X, you can buy
those. I'd say that works about half the time LOL, as you can see by the illustrations from my jewelry box that are accompanying this blog post.
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