On taking a day off...
Yesterday, I asked Catherine Ryan Hyde about taking a break from writing. She posted something about just coming off a break.
I'm looking forward to doing that. I think I need one because I'm afraid I've been too much of a workaholic since November of 2009.
I know that precise date, because that's when I wrote Stick, which will be coming out in October.
Since then, I've written three other novels whose titles will remain behind the wall.
That's a lot of work.
If you read back some distance through the archives of this blog, I did mention one I'd been working on that I was planning to finish last month -- at the end of April. Well, that one went a little overbudget in terms of work, words, and time, but it is finished now.
Whew.
I'm just going back through it and taking out some words and making sure all the dates and time span references coordinate. Then it's done and I can take a holiday.
I hope.
I notice there are actually papers here on my desk in front of me from last May -- entirely a year ago -- and I should probably excavate through them so I create some surface area for next year's accumulation.
I know there are bound to be writers who'll disagree with this, but I don't consider the post-acquisition phase of work (editing, revisions, copy edits) to be actual "work," because they don't really empty me out like the real job -- actually writing something new -- all the stuff that actually goes into a manuscript BEFORE official eyes see it -- does.
Which is what I'm finishing now.
And hoping I don't start something new too soon.
Yesterday, I watched a documentary about a theory behind the past three decades of extreme weather (including events as recent as the terrible tornado in Missouri).
Yesterday morning I went out on a 7-mile run in the hills and there were flurries of snow falling.
Crazy.
