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I haven’t really worked on writing since the copy edits went off to New York. We’ve continued to work on the comic book, because the deadline is always approaching on something; it’s the nature of the business. For most writers there is fallow time between books, but I haven’t had that luxury in years. I’ve blogged, and e-mailed, and looked at covers for books, and cover copy, and catalogue copy, and . . . but I haven’t really written anything else. I started a short piece, but stopped, just stopped and put it away, so I could think about it. It’s like SKIN TRADE was the last rock on the bottom of my boat, and I can no longer pretend that there isn’t water coming in, even I must return to the dock and get repairs done. You can only bail for so long before the sharks swim in, or the boat sinks out from under you. So, I’m in dry dock. I’ve left the seas of imagination for a little while. Time for my muse and I to find other things to do. Time to play. Time to gaze out of a window, at nothing, but the mind is busy, or isn’t busy, and either way it’s strangely vaulable. I started to feel bad about not digging into the next project, but Jon and all the close friends who saw me through the end of SKIN TRADE, tell me the same thing. I’m tired, and I haven’t recovered. They talk about it as if I’ve been ill. Maybe I have been. You know those signs that say, "Don’t drive faster than your guardian angel can fly." Well, maybe as a writer you need a sign that reads, "Don’t write faster than your muse can create." I think I’ve been running ahead of her, and me, and each day that I lie quiet, I feel a little better.  I’m tired tonight, but it’s okay to be tired. I’m looking at putting in a vegetable garden this year. I’ll have help taking care of it, but this is the first year that I’ve allowed myself to take the time to even plan what I want. I used to love to garden. I read an article years ago in one of the writing magazines about writers and their hobbies. The author of the article, who I cannot remember now, sorry, found out that most writers didn’t have hobbies. They all said they did, but when asked when was the last time they did the hobby, they had to admit, it had been years. Writing is hard work, and it takes parts of you that would normally go elsewhere, to hobbies, to fun, to family, to friends; it takes them, or maybe it fills the space they take, so there is no room left for such things. I have determined this year that I will see my friends and do fun things, and write; instead of just write. So far, I’ve seen more friends and had more fun, now we will need to see about the writing, but I am not ready, not yet. For the first time, in years, I don’t know what comes next. Once that would have frightened me, but not now, ideas are coming, floating, beckoning, beginning to form. The next Merry book will be very important in deciding how many more there will be, and how the rest of the books will be shaped. I’ve left sure ground behind, and now it’s new, like when you divorce after a long marriage, and you have to remake your life. I’ve worked so long and so hard to get Merry to the end of this part of her story, that I feel befuddled by so many choices, so many decisions. The possibilities were at first wonderous. They were almost what I had been waiting for, but now, it feels like too many, almost too much freedom in the story line, but as a writer I cannot bear the thought of straight-jacketing myself into another storyline that does not allow for side trips. One of the things that makes me still excited about Anita is how idea leads to idea. One book will give me ideas for something totally new for Anita and the gang, or open up storylines that I know when X and Y have finally happened we’ll be able to do this new idea here. I want that for Merry, and her world, but I keep getting ideas that are connected too closely, and I’m beginning to wonder if there’s something about Merry world that does not lend itself to the same freedom of plot that Anita has; or maybe I’m just tired. I do tend to get gloomy when I’m tired.

So, I’m to bed before I get more maudlin.