It Takes a Team

I was driving home from a very magical New Year's Eve celebration yesterday. Highway unraveling before us, after two and half hours the car was full of long legs and stale farts. My five-year old kept screaming to turn the music up, while my husband and I tried to finish at least one conversation, and I suddenly remembered New Year's resolutions. I had brought out my journal that morning but gotten distracted amidst packing and forgotten to focus my intentions for the year.

So I asked Hubby if he was going to make resolutions, and he seemed disinclined. I started thinking out loud about my list, and finally after getting down to about the fourth or fifth one (I LOVE an opportunity to make a good list), I asked him if he would write them down for me. And he did. And he emailed them back to me before we had to pull the car over for the littlest boy to puke (He has a sensitive stomach, poor guy, so nothing new there.)

This little excerpt just goes to show: Writing is a solitary task, but it doesn't happen alone. 

Every success takes a team of people working to create it, every mile parker, every goal post passed. Every list created. As I step into 2018, I am reminded to be thankful for all those folks who make me a better writer: Hubby who tirelessly reads and discusses everything I create, my beta-readers, family, agents, and friends, all who participate in the creative work of my life. 

When I grew up, the archetype of the starving artist or the troubled artist really didn't speak to me. You know the story: brilliant (usually) man who fails his family and is self-medicating with a variety of substances who also somehow managed to produce an incredible piece of art in his sixty plus years. It's no wonder that I still have a hard time calling myself an artist. I still prefer the term a friend of mine coined--creative worker. 

But the older I get, the more I mine the other side of creativity's story. Tilling the soil of my soul nourishes not just me but those around me, and I reminded again that thankfulness and teamwork is at the heart of it all. And what a beautiful garden I live in, amid all the heartache and struggle and injustice. So to all of you writers out there. Keep working on it. Keep connecting. And make something new and beautiful with which you and others can fall in love.

Happy, happy New Year all!

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