I did it myself and I still don't believe it

I got an email this morning. Actually, it was sent yesterday morning, but I didn't get it until this morning. And I'm pretty bummed. This email was from Huffington Post Live, and they wanted me to do a live interview with them today. They had found the comments I made on the The Daily Reader regarding censorship and The Great Purge of 2013. Here's the article and my comments: http://www.the-digital-reader.com/2013/10/13/amazon-bn-whsmith-now/#.Unx5Xvl18ud. Problem is, they're in New York and an hour ahead of us. And I didn't get the email until 9:50 this morning, which was right at 11:00 their time. So, basically . . .

I missed the boat.

National coverage. And thanks, Comcast, for that efficient delivery of my mail. Nice job - as always.

But here's the good part:  I was bummed. Really bummed. Still am. And what did I do about being bummed?

I sat down and wrote. I wrote all afternoon and most of the evening. I'm participating in NaNoWriMo, and I'm supposed to write 50,000 words by the end of November.

As of today, I have 41,466. Of those, I wrote 11,271 of them TODAY. Yes, you read that right. Today. In response to being bummed about missing out on a nationally-televised interview. Who would've guessed?

No, the 11,271 words does not make up for the missed interview. It doesn't even make me feel better. But it does make me laugh. According to my stats, at the rate I'm going I should be done with my 50,000 words by . . .

Saturday.

Good god. That's just ridiculous.

But let me tell you a little something about my writing today. I'm actually using NaNoWriMo to get a jump on the third novel, Renovating a Heart. I was so pissed off that I thought, You know, I probably shouldn't try to write when I'm so pissed off. But I did it anyway.

I picked up where I left off yesterday and started writing this afternoon. Two hours later, I was writing one of the most heartbreaking scenes I've ever written and crying. Really crying. Then I got to see them somewhat resolve the problems they were having, and I was happy for them. It was so sweet.

So the moral of the story is this, convoluted as it may be: Just frickin' write. It doesn't matter if you're pissed off, on top of the world, or feeling like somebody just kicked you in the gonads. Just write. Just sit down and do it.

And if you think your work is crap, just remember what Annie Dillard said: "If I actually believed that the progress of human understanding depended on our crop of contemporary novelists, I would shoot myself." Annie, I couldn't agree more.

So yeah, I'm glad I wrote 11,271 words today. And no, I'm still pissed about the interview. But when I make my first million, I'll get over it.