Total Focus

Have you ever heard of losing yourself in your work? Well, that’s what happens to me, and it’s great. It’s like no matter what else is happening in my life at the moment, be it good or bad, it’s completely out of my mind when I’m working on my manuscript. Whether writing the first draft or revising for the umpteenth time, everything that is going on outside of my office is nowhere in my mind.

Fortunately for me, I have the ability to focus on what I’m doing. It’s the way I have always been. When I used to paint and sculpt, I would get into that “zone” and stay there for hours. Yeah, it drove my wife crazy, but she understood it. And when I composed and played music, I would be at that electronic keyboard for hours on end, completely oblivious to the outside world.

The thing about me is that there is ANOTHER world. A CREATIVE world. And my entire life, be it art, music, and now writing, I have been completely focused on whatever it is that I’m doing until I have completed what I set out to do. And right now, for THE VASE, I am in THAT world. This past week, so many things were happening that might have otherwise taken up my mental space. But once I sat down in that chair in front of my brand new Sony Vaio, I was transported to Nazareth, Israel, and into the lives of the Muhabi family, Hiram Weiss, Captain Mathias, Harvey Holmes, and Mary Levin.

I was absorbed by my characters' current situations, and even their past ones, as those first four chapters contain two flashbacks to events that happened three years prior.

And as I sit content for how it turned out, I find myself itching for Ti to send the next four chapters so I can dive into those. Was art and music ever this much fun? Yes, but it’s apples and oranges. One day I will try to explain how these different creative experiences compare. Maybe real soon.