Now far ahead the road has gone...

It's been a little over a week since I officially began my journey with Tolkien, and I have already run into an obstacle:  my own laziness.  Since I posted last, I received what I think were the rest of my books for research, and I breathed a small sigh of satisfaction--like I'd reached a goal, even accomplished something.  But I hadn't.  The line only shifted, like a mirage in a desert, and I realized that I actually had to open the books and start reading.   Ugh.  So I procrastinated that day and the next and the next and probably for a couple more days after that, comfortable in the knowledge that my deadline is a long way off with many weeks and months filled with empty time.  The mirage grew.

Then, a few days ago, the responsible part of myself remembered:  I barely made my last deadline.  This book will be even harder!  What was I doing, waiting even a single day to begin?  No, I didn't have time.  True, I had classes to prepare, papers to grade, emails to handle, a kid to homeschool, and a household to run--but I also had a book to write.  So, finally I pulled out a book from the stack waiting for me.  Tolkien:  The Authorized Biography, by Humphrey Carpenter.  I grabbed the first pen I saw for annotating, and I made myself sit down to read at last.  

The road stretches far, far away into the distance.  I see mountains and forests ahead that look a little forbidding, and I am not a little nervous about the ordeal I have signed up for.  Doing justice to the master of high fantasy's life story will not be easy, even if it is "just" for children.  But the road waits for me to follow where it leads, and so I will keep walking onward.  And maybe, just maybe, it will even be fun.