It’s late and my mind is whirring. I’m tired but not sleepy. I hate it when that happens.
It has been my experience that readers often think novelists live exciting, extraordinary lives. The truth is, like most people, this novelist’s life is quite ordinary. I work and I love and I hurt and I worry and I laugh and I cry. (Of course, a great deal of that never makes it into this public diary — for the very reason that this *is* a public diary.) However, it does work its way into my novels, woven into the lives of my characters, a bit here, a bit there. What makes up me, makes up them.
God has a way of taking all of those things I experience and feel — the good and the bad, the easy and the hard, the ordinary and the extradinary — and using them to teach me, about Himself and about myself. Sometimes, I would wish for fewer lessons. Or maybe just easier ones.
“Life is hard, but God is good.” That much I know, even when I am sleepless and wrestling with things in my mind and heart.
-rlh-
P.S. The writing moved forward by inches today. I spent long hours at the computer and only have a few finished pages to show for it. Finally I went for a swim in my neighbor’s pool. That was a lovely break.
11:37 p.m. – 2002-07-06
