For the last few days I’ve felt really bogged down by all the freelance work I let stack up, and that’s no one’s fault but mine. None of it will go unattended, I assure you — but I’ve felt the need to step back from the fiction writing in order to play catch up on … well … everything else. And ever since yesterday morning, that’s what I’ve been doing.

I’m able to indulge this hiatus because I’m well ahead of deadline for The Boneshaker — which doesn’t require a full, readable draft until the beginning of July; and besides, I was starting to make myself crazy. I don’t know how it works for you other writers out there, but the closer I get to the end the MORE I want to write ALL THE TIME until I FINISH THE DAMN THING. And I hit that point last week.

But deadlines are deadlines, and many other deadlines fall between now and July. So it’s my fiction that’s been temporarily shunted aside, and that’s how it works sometimes.

I’ve really made a compost pile of that New Year’s Resolution, haven’t I?

It’s not a big deal. If I can take a week to hunker down and work on nothing but Boneshaker, I can finish Draft Zero without a problem, so there’s nothing but time. I’ll get back to work on it next week, when I’ll have the schedule space and presence of mind to be more careful. I’d become terribly navel-gazey about it, and I’m afraid the story was going to suffer for it if I kept up my maniacal NOSE TO GRINDSTONE, MONKEY attitude. I’m not one of those people who can sit inside all day, every day, for weeks at a time, and still produce good material — especially not when other projects are hollering for my attention, and those other projects (a). pay sooner and (b). are due earlier.

Ergo, just since yesterday I’ve wrapped up two 1000+ word freelance research/writing projects* and finished reading one book for web copy. I still have one book to read (but I’ve got a couple of weeks on it) and web copy to write for the freshly consumed tome, but these are tasks that are generally pleasurable or leisurely — and they’re easy to work around a schedule of fiction output.

Tomorrow I’m going to give these research projects one more read-through and then submit them to the editor. Following that, I’ll noodle with web copy until lunchtime; and after lunch — when I usually turn to Boneshaker — I think I’m going to take an afternoon of Me Time, just to round out the week and recharge my creative batteries. Maybe I’ll walk down to that cemetery I’ve been talking about, depending on the weather. Maybe I’ll go to the pet store and get Howard some new plants, because God knows he needs them. Maybe I’ll take a nap. Yeah. Left to my own devices, I’m not a very exciting sort of soul, I know.

Anyway.
We’ll see.