Guest Allie Pleiter: The “Real People”

It happened again. I had set aside an afternoon to make serious progress on my manuscript when the phone rang. A “you must come NOW, this is a sort of emergency” kind of request--the kind of chip only a true friend can call in.

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I hate that I hesitated. I’m not proud of how I calculated the lost opportunity of work--on a Sunday, no less (cut me some slack, I’ve got a book due June 1)--with the gained opportunity to help out a dear friend. I’m so bad at these kinds of decisions. Not that I make the wrong choice, but that I agonize over the choice. I like to think of myself as the kind of person who puts people ahead of tasks, but the truth of the matter is that I’m too much of a time-management freak to really do that. I dislike how I try to manage what ought to be a matter of the heart and Holy Spirit.

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Part of it is born from the fact that I cannot procrastinate. My writing style is such that I cannot lock myself in a closet and barrel headlong toward an impending deadline. The most words I’m ever able to produce in a day is about 2,000. Not that I haven’t tried to become what I lovingly call “a big chunk writer,” but the essential truth is that my muse comes in small plates, not combo platters. So, I tell myself that missing a planned day of writing is sure to spell doom down the road.

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That’s a lie. It has never, ever spelled doom. I’m smart enough to know better--or ought to be.
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It’s the old saying, “there’s always time to do God’s will.” When will I ever learn that often, when I come back from much-needed time with a good friend, or being there when a friend ought to be there, the writing gushes out of me? It’s because I’ve filled the well. In over a dozen years of writing, I’ve only missed one deadline, ever, and that was for a crisis of such gargantuan proportions that most people were stunned I could write anything at all, much less make a delayed deadline.

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I know how to deliver a manuscript. Why do I doubt I’ll recognize the line of “time to buckle down,” on days like yesterday when I know I will?
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I went and helped my friend, had a grand time, and made my word count with ease today. I’ll make my deadline, too, because that’s the kind of writer I am. Why on earth do I continue to doubt myself on decisions like yesterday’s?
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What about you? How and when do know when to do what I call “laying down the work in favor of the real people?”
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If you’d like to be entered in a drawing for a copy of Allie’s Homefront Hero, please mention it in the comments section and leave your e-mail addy (remembering “at” and “dot”). Then watch our Weekend Edition for the winner!

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Homefront Hero

Love Inspired Historical - May 2012

#978-0-373-82916-3

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Dashing and valiantly wounded, Captain John Gallows could have stepped straight out of an army recruitment poster. Leanne Sample can't help being impressed—although the lovely Red Cross nurse tries to hide it. She knows better than to get attached to the daring captain who is only home to heal and help rally support for the war's final push. As soon as he's well enough, he'll rush back to Europe, back to war—and far away from South Carolina and Leanne. But when an epidemic strikes close to home, John comes to realize what it truly means to be a hero—Leanne's hero.

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An avid knitter, coffee junkie, and devoted chocoholic, Allie Pleiter writes both fiction and non-fiction. The enthusiastic but slightly untidy mother of two, Allie spends her days writing books, buying yarn, and finding new ways to avoid housework. Allie hails from Connecticut, moved to the Midwest to attend Northwestern University, and currently lives outside Chicago, Illinois. The “dare from a friend” to begin writing has produced two parenting books, fourteen novels, and various national speaking engagements on faith, women’s issues, and writing. Visit her website at http://www.alliepleiter.com/ or her knitting blog at http://www.destiknitions.blogspot.com/