"Okay, Okay, Okay!"

It’s funny, sometimes, how you can associate a person with a phrase they often say.

In our family each one of us has a phrase that we’re know for. MBWs phrase is “God, give me strength…” usually uttered after Tommy does something he shouldn’t, such as this. My phrase is “God bless it!” which, as you might have guessed, is the PG version of a much stronger statement – again, often delivered in a moment of frustration. An exasperated “Oh, man!” is what Chris says when he is told he can’t do something he wants to do right when he wants to do it. Tommy’s phrase is “Okay, okay okay!!!” when he is told, for the fifth time, to come to the dinner table and eat. We occasionally share a laugh when we hear each other saying these particular words. In fact, as I write this, I can hear the tone of voice and visualize the facial expression of MBW, Chris and Tommy as they say their trademark lines.

But for this particular post I will borrow Tommy’s phrase and say, “Okay, okay, okay!” And I’ll add to it by saying, “I’m sorry I haven’t posted. I’m sorry I haven’t written more. I’m sorry I have not kept up with my blog and have not visited yours.”

I think, if I can remember back that far, that in my last few posts I alluded to not feeling like I had the time to do the kind of writing I wanted to do. I believe I said I did not want to do short, update posts because this was never intended to be that kind of blog. Many people have blogs that are updated frequently and describe the daily activities of the writer and his/her friends and family. To be brutally honest the daily, mundane activities of my life are not worth the pixels required to communicate them to others, so in this blog I had (for the most part) elected to only expend pixels when I had something to say that I thought was worthy of your time, as well as mine. You may disagree, but I thought this post, this post, and and this one were interesting, amusing or touching, to one degree or another. That is the kind of writing I want to do.

But those moments don’t regularly come up twice a week and I had been running out of things to say. And when they did come up, I would think to myself, “I should post this on the blog”, but I wouldn’t get around to it. There was always something else that had to be done. When there was time, the moments I considered writing about had passed and I couldn’t recall the details that would have made the post interesting. When I sat down to write, I could only think of the trite, everyday moments that don’t make for interesting reading. As vain as this may sound, I did not want to waste your time, or mine, with a mindless, empty, vapid post.

Hence, the lack of words for the last 7 months or so.

It’s not like I haven’t been doing anything else. I’ve not been sitting around watching TV when I could have been writing for this blog – if you read this you know that. I have changed jobs yet again, begun working on a new website, skied with the family about 15 times and I’m coaching soccer once again. I’ve promised Chris and Tommy I would teach them how to catch fish – and actually this weekend we are going to the local lake to try fishing for the very first time. But there’s one thing, more than any other, that has taken time away from writing for this blog.

I’m trying to write a novel.

For the past 20 years I have had a story idea in my head. I would think about the story, and in particular the central character, off and on for weeks and months at a time. I would visualize scenes, dialog and settings as I commuted to work each day. The one thing I didn’t do was actually site down and write.

I’ve read more than one blog where the author talked about wanting to write a book. Some actually have contracts in place, others suspended their blog to write the book, and others blog about wanting to write a book. So it might be fair to say that blogging is a substitute, for some bloggers, for writing a novel. For me, blogging was a novelty, something new to try just to see how it would go. I honestly never expected anyone to read it, and I don’t know if you can imagine my genuine surprise when I started to receive comments from people who enjoyed what I had to say.

It was never about warming up to write a novel.

But when I hit my birthday last fall, realizing I was one year older and one year further removed from accomplishing anything, I made a commitment to take a shot at writing the story I have had in my head for so long. Time to put up or shut up. Make a legitimate effort to write the thing, or admit I wasn’t ever going to do it and stop thinking about it all the time.

Now if you are still reading this post, and if you’ve been a reader of this blog for any length of time, you might be thinking the book I have in mind is a family book. Maybe the story of my family, derived from some of the posts in this blog. Maybe you’re thinking it’s a story about a fictional family that goes though some of same things I’ve written about here.

Nope.

The story I want to write is science fiction.

The thing is I’m not really a huge science fiction guy. I’ve read my share of SF but I’m not a geek about it. I don’t do Star Trek. I like the original Dune stories but even that series wore on me after the second one; and the new series co-written by Frank Herbert’s son is a bit to bland and programmatic for me. So I’m not even really sure why I want to write this particular story.

But I do want to write it. I think it would make a good read. And I don’t think you’d have to be a SF geek to enjoy it. So I made the commitment and started to write the story in November. Yes, I sat down almost every night and put words on the screen. My goal was to write a chapter every month, and if I could stick to that I’d have a loose first draft in about 2 years.

So here I am, mid-May, and I have one chapter complete and the first page of chapter 2 done.

Not doing so well, am I?

But I’m sticking with it. I sit down and open the Word document almost every night, or at a minimum 5 nights a week. Some nights I make good progress, but most nights I struggle to get a paragraph complete. Writing that story does not flow nearly as easily as writing this post. For something I have thought about for so long, it just doesn’t seem to flow onto the page. What bothers me is when I go back and read what I’ve written, I don’t think it is very good.

So I’ll keep plugging along and see how it goes. My two-year time frame isn’t realistic, but maybe a four-year time frame is. Maybe the further along I go the more easily it will flow. Or maybe it will go nowhere. But at least I will have given it a fair shot.

I have received some email messages from people asking me why I stopped posting and if I planned to resume posting on this site. I think I've ansered the why I stopped, and, to quote my son – “Okay, Okay, Okay!” I promise to try to do better about posting here. There have been a couple of incidents that I think would make for good posts. And if you are reading this, please take a look at my new website. It’s more than just a travel site – it’s also a place for me to share photographs and talk about things outside of my Family Man role. In fact, if you remember this Family Man post, I will answer the question on my new site. It won’t be obvious, you’ll have to look for it, but I will put it there.

Thank you for reading.

It’s Great to be The Family Man