Dog Rescue Fundraising vs. Writing Work

This weekend was full of dog rescue fundraising work. Love a Golden had a booth at a craft fair on Saturday, and on Sunday we did Santa photos (with dogs and one really brave cat). Thinking back on the two days, I made some connections with the writing work I do. (Doesn't everything connect to writing?) Here they are:

• At the craft fair we made our money a dollar at a time. Oh, we had baskets and dog blankets for sale, and we sold lots of them, but mostly we sold scoops of homemade dog biscuits for $1. Writing a short story or a novel is written one word at a time. When we were swamped with customers, it was hard to guess our progress. Had we made lots of money to put toward our vet bills, or had we made little headway? It's also sometimes difficult to determine how far we've progressed with our manuscript when we're in the middle of working on it. Don't lose your faith. Keep moving forward.

•  Listening is key. I got the joy of listening to people's stories about their dogs. As a writer, we have to listen to our writer's intuition. What would be an authentic response for our character? What mementos would our character bring with them when they leave their home forever? Our writing ear will tell us if we're writing true or not.

•  It's exhausting. Getting up early to set up a booth... spending all day on your feet as you wait on customers... socializing as you try to deftly prod them into spending money to help rescue more dogs--it's tiring. Writing is also exhausting. However, when a chapter is revised, when a manuscript's third draft is finally finished... Well, that's rewarding.

Here is Radar getting his picture taken with Santa. As usual,
his three-foot-long tongue is out and dribbling a river of slobber
onto the floor.

 How about you? What did you do over the weekend?