It has been a late winter of distraction. My primary care physician told me in the middle of February that the pain and bleeding from my kidney could be cancer. He followed that up with pathology supporting his assumption. (It was a middling stage of cancer, but I don’t know if the stages they use in Japan are the same as the stages in America.) He sent me to a urologist. The urologist did an ultrasound two weeks ago and said he didn’t think it was cancer. I just got the results of a CT scan two days ago. A kidney stone is causing the bleeding and pain (which is what I had suspected in the first place). My primary care physician is on my “Grrr” list, but I followed up on his concerns, which was the important thing.

So what do you do with your writing when mortality is close enough to feel its breath on your face (in my worst imagination this happened a lot)? What do you do when you are too distracted to write? 

Write anyway. 

I have two simple suggestions for that.

First, edit something old.

You can’t stop working, right? If you’re a writer, you write (or revise or at least edit). I sit down to write every day (and I succeed almost every time). I figured I was too distracted to lose myself in an invented world and populate it with characters, but I had novels that needed work, so I edited. It’s calming to sink your mind into a story you know like a comfortable old friend when you want to escape the prospect of death. Mortality also gave me a little kick to get things finished. 

It did not help much with the push to publish, though. That’s a lengthy process. Lengthy processes are not foremost priorities when you don’t know how much time you have left. (Yes, it’s sad to admit I was that concerned, but imagination is important for a writer, isn’t it?)

Second, write something new.

This week, I got to where I had nothing I needed to edit. It perplexed me, assuming I could never muster sufficient concentration to write anything new. But tried it anyway. It was an act of faith. (My wife’s constant upbeat attitude also took root.) 

And I wrote! I started only a handful of days before I got the “don’t worry about it” diagnosis, but I could write fresh scenes for Novel 7 each day. With a little extra push, I could force my way through the distraction, because the story is strong. I’ve been knocking the idea around for a couple of years, and I think I have worked out enough of the kinks that it’s realizable.

The one thing I did not attempt as I waited for test results was writing more blog posts. If you’re keeping up with the blog, though, don’t assume missing blog posts mean things are going badly. It also happens when I visit family at the holidays or get so wrapped up in writing I can’t tear myself away. The stories matter more to me than the commentary.