Picking Up The Slack

This is a note my four-year old son, Alex left for me the other day and consequently the world's largest post-it note (Aesing by the way is our housekeeper and nanny - it's a Thai thing). It made me smile.

If there ever was proof that the biggest influence on young children are their parents then this is it. Even when 'papa' is struggling with the whole redrafting process, Alex is whipping out book after book. Not a week will go by without him enthusiastically stating: 'I'm gonna make a book today.' Boy, if only getting published was this easy. And actually it might be. There are enough digital online self-publishers available and I might be tempted to follow that road if it really gets tough to get published (but that is a story for another day).

Anyway, my son reminds me that the only real moment to get anything done is the NOW. I pine away lamenting the hardships of redrafting work that I really don't want to be redrafting, while looking for IT gigs I don't really want and feeling sad because I gave up a trip with my honey to Vietnam in order to punish myself for not getting the book done in time. And I won't. Deadline is up this week and I'm not even past a third of the book yet. It will get easier, but like my dad says: 'You have to do the grunt work.' And he's right. Thinking somehow because I managed to whip up some frosting does not make a good cake. Every artist in every field needs to put in the heavy lifting in order to heave their creation onto the stage. So I'll pour myself another coffee, walk up to our Bangkok city house loft, park my butt behind my groaning PC (which I seriously believe is imitating my own moans) and open that 'Fiction Writing' folder staring accusingly at me from the desktop.

Parents tell you how to do it. Offspring simply does it. And in the meantime we write blogs with large post-it notes as inspiration that life imitates art imitates life...