Like Nike said, just do it

I went to book club this past Monday night. This time we read The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott, by Kelly O'Connor McNees. It's historical fiction, based on a year in the life of Louisa May Alcott, the summer before she begins her writing career in Boston. I like history a lot and although I don't gravitate towards historical fiction (mostly I like my history to be history and my fiction to be fiction), I've read some really good ones. I've also read some really poor ones. This one was somewhere in the middle.

Although the book was "meh" to me, the interesting thing about the meeting was that the author was in attendance for both dinner and the discussion afterwards. Being an English major in college and dabbling in writing myself in both high school and college (and a few random forays with the pen in my adulthood), I was intrigued by her process and peppered her with questions. I was impressed by her dogged determination. Once she made up her mind to write a novel, she had the discipline and commitment to just sit down and do it, carving out morning hours before her job to pursue her ambition. That's really awesome. There are a lot of things I like to do, too, but motivation is not always the easiest thing for me-- John often says that I have the attention span of a gnat and sometimes that's very true. I can be easily bored and distracted, even when I'm doing something I love.

In college, I had a friend named Eileen. She was in my Alpha Phi Omega pledge class. She lives in New York now, as a dispatcher for NYPD or FDNY, I can't remember which. I talk to her every now and then via Facebook and email. In college she always asked, "when are you going to write a book?" I laughed.  She asks me that nowadays sometimes and I still laugh. Yet I keep thinking about Monday night and the possibility of writing a novel. Hmmm....