#ROW80 Check In #2 When Plans go Awry, You Adjust :)

I am blessed in that I have had many opportunities to travel. My mother always says it's because I was born on a Thursday (Thursday's child has far to go). This journey of writing I am on is already coming with adjustments. This non-coffee drinker has been drinking the stuff! (well, half coffee, half milk, a little caffeine goes a LONG way in my system).


The first trip I ever took that went horribly awry was a school vacation to Walt Disney World when I was in 6th grade. We went by bus from Virginia Beach, Va to Orlando, FL. On the way home, the bus broke down, stranding us at the Georgia Welcoming Center. A bus full of teenagers for 8 hours? The staff at the Welcoming Center was NOT very welcoming. But, we bought their entire supply of candy, and nearly emptied out the vending machines. And we played a good deal of card games. The center sold decks with pictures of Georgia on them.


Since then, I've gone to Paris with my husband....with him in a wheelchair. Want to know how handicapped accessible the City of Lights is? The Louvre. That's about it. Oh, and the train station in La Defense has an elevator. No other train station has an elevator, so I carried the wheel chair up and down the two flights of stairs while my husband played Hop-along Cassidy up and down the stairs. Did I mention this was our honeymoon? Yep. He broke his ankle in three places two weeks before our wedding. 


Then there was the 10 days in Japan in 2007. Going home, I didn't really consider how difficult it would be to move all three pieces of my luggage through Shinjuku Station during rush hour in the morning to get to the airport in Tokyo (I was staying in Yokosuka, where the Navy base is). It wasn't like Paris where people offered to help me. No, instead I just cried as I couldn't get all of the pieces up the stairs in time to make my train to make it to the airport in time to catch my flight. I was about to fall into despair when Eureka! I just pushed the pieces out the door and hailed a taxi. It was $150 in U.S. after the exchange rate, but I made my flight! 


Anyway, every journey I've ever made is never perfect. From the cross-country moves to San Diego and back to the East Coast, visiting my husband in Australia and Hawaii, and the multitude of times I've traveled to middle-of-nowhere Texas, I've always had to improvise. This Round of Words in 80 Days is no different.


I am sad and disappointed to say my first draft still isn't finished. However, I'm not throwing in the towel. Far from it. I have adjusted. The story planning of my next novel is going to become something I do whenever, not necessarily this week. It's not absolutely vital to me getting CANCELLED out the door. I am also very, very close to a completed first draft. 

In fact, today is Sunday, and the day I have the most time to write. Friday and Saturday I had social obligations for my husband's work. But today, he's going to watch the baby and I'm going to get a book finished!


So if your #ROW80 journey isn't going 100% to plan, fret not. This is a pretty long trip, 80 days. And if a few days aren't what we expect it will be okay. Looking back, we're going to remember the successes, and the setbacks won't matter.


"CANCELLED" arriving SEPTEMBER 2011. A robotics engineer asks his business partner to marry him, but a previous one-night stand is having his baby.


Be sure to read a check-in from one of my friends also participating in Round 3 of a Round of Words in 80 Days.