Some Things Are Easy

Doesn't it seem like everything in the publishing world is hard? It's hard to get that book done--even harder to get it polished and sparkling. Anyone who's ever done it knows it's really hard to then turn that novel into a query letter. Finding an agent is hard--being rejected is hard. Once you find an agent, doing revisions is hard! Waiting for that submission list is hard--waiting for editors' responses is even harder. And I can only imagine (and gather from friends' experiences) that even once you have that publishing deal, things continue to be hard. If it was easy, it wouldn't be hard.

But sometimes we get to take a step back from all the things that are hard, and enjoy some of the things that are easy.

Like being a three year old's hero.

My daughter loves to draw. LOVES to draw. And she doesn't draw with crayons, she like to draw with pen. This one particular pen especially. Now this girl draws the way really, really prolific authors write. She covers both side of about twenty pieces of white paper every day. So, inevitably, her pen ran out of ink.

It was a tragedy.

But the biggest problem was that she still wanted that exact pen. Now it's not the kind of pen you can go pick up at the store. It's a pen from some pharmaceutical company that I happened to acquire about two years ago. I am NEVER going to find another pen like this again.

But my daughter is near tears because her special pen is out of ink.

So what do I do? Well I thought about it for a minute and then went and found a regular old Bic clicky pen and took the inside out and put it in the special pen.

Easy.

Took a little creativity, but easy.

My daughter loves me! She smiled and hugged me and said, "Oh Mommy, you put the ink back in my special pen! Thank you!" And then she scampered off to cover another twenty pages.

With all the things in life that are hard, it's good to know that there are still some simple pleasures.

Like being my daughter's hero.

Ciao!