Literary Meditation

From my previous post, you may have picked up my lamenting of a wasted life.  Ten years working on a novel and I didn't want to spend time on it anymore.  From some gentle nudging from friends and colleagues, I decided to spend ten--fifteen minutes at most--doing rewrites. After those minutes I was going to live my life.

Those minutes turned into an hour, and what a wonderful hour that was.  I was in the zone of writing and caring about this novel again.  I might hate it again, but at this time, I cared.

That hour was not about wasting my life.  It was a deep, creative meditation.  I didn't waste ten years of my life, I grew creatively and spiritually.  For ten years, I was sitting at my own banyan tree. The sentences I wrote were my mantra.  The resistance I felt was Mara sending arrows toward me.  Writing turned those arrows into flowers that fell at my feet.

I meditate.  Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad.  Whatever the "sit," it aims for my overall piece of mind.  Once I finished writing, I went for a run--something I hadn't done in awhile.  I felt jazzed.

Not a single story is wasted.  It may not find publication, but it help pad the meditation cushion where I sit.     

Literary Choices

I was asked to work on my novel Miraculous Boy.  My agent is asking me to do rewrites.  My agent is rare.  He won't give up on this book.  MB has been on the market on two separate occasions and hadn't sold.  Frankly, I'm tired of this book.  I've put in ten years into writing and rewriting this book.  I swear in all the time I'd put into it, I wondered about the job opportunities I didn't take up or the relationships that passed me buy.  I chose art making over everything else. 

Writing a book means that there are other aspects of my life I had to give up or did not pursue.  We are our choices and I chose to write.  This is not a bad choice.  I don't regret the creative process during the last ten years, but I'm nearing fifty.  At what point should I just give up and find other ways to grow my life?