I’m behind some very personal goals.  Since last week I’ve been under the very good weather in our city.  It feels like I’ve had too much to do at my church.  I’m ending a semester at Garrett-Evangelical.  Trying to fight back to my clearest head, I’ve looked at my work in progress and heard it calling for attention.

I’m in front of a few deadlines with work from my secondary lives.  So I’m a week or two away from turning myself to the strong but patient voice of my manuscript.  I’m looking forward it.  I got a nudge last week in the form of feedback, and I’ve been thinking of it since I read the email.  I’m turning things over in my mind, changing and cutting and keeping and guessing and imagining.

Tonight, after Bryce was in bed, after throwing a chicken in the oven for Dawn’s post-class snack, I fell into the chair.  Energy gone, I looked over facebook, opened my inbox, and started planning details of tomorrow.  I wanted to plan to write, but it won’t be there.  So instead, I searched through one of my folders, looking for another prompt, something that would remind me of why I write even though I wouldn’t be able to write.  I found something better.  I found a compliment.  A woman had read one of my first novel-length manuscripts, the story that is very much present but now gone.  I read her email to me.

Among her first words was this: Your manuscript is a treasure…You must know that!

Years sit between me and the time I first got this message.  It was from a published novelist who became a friend for a time.  I read it last night to remind me of the treasure at my fingertips.  Whether or not that story or the current story gets couched between a publisher’s covers, there are things I must know.  Those are the things that will bring me back to the work in progress.  I hope you have things worth remembering about your work, be it writing or otherwise.