News

I have struggled all week with the next Anita book; SKIN TRADE. I mean I’ve managed to get essays, and interviews, and signed stuff; all things that I’d been putting off and had finally become critical. But, the book, which is after all the main job of mine, had lanquished. When I did get a few minutes to work on it, I just couldn’t concentrate because of all the other stuff pressing down on me. I think I got nine pages on Monday, and the rest of the week has been just two, or three at a time, and I’d been happy with that. Some days nothing got saved the next day, at all. It all to be thrown out and rewritten. Today was another late start. Trinity was off school and if you can’t spend a little extra time with your kid then what’s the point, right? So, late start, discouraging page count for the week, and too many distractions. I did not have high hopes for the day’s output. Then a strange thing happened, the dam opened. I knew where I’d gone wrong. I jumped back, lost a few pages and started over. By lunch time it was going great guns, and I’d almost made back the pages I’d rewritten. It was frustrating to stop for lunch, which is how I knew it was going well. Frankly, if I hadn’t had yoga just after lunch and needed to give my food time to settle I’d have worked through lunch. So lunch, then I changed for yoga, and went back to work. I was, again, going at a good pace when it was time to break for exercise. Yoga, then change back into street clothes, then back to work. Trinity spent the day with grandma finishing up some craft projects that they’ve been working on. I am like the anti-craft person. Trin loves it all. It’s so not from my side of the family tree. So, back to work, and eager to get there. With all the interruptions the book was still at a white, hot heat.

At the end of the day, even with throwing out two and three pages here and there to rewrite, and backfill, I had twenty-eight pages for the day. That’s right, 28 pages. How cool is that? Since my goal is six pages for the five days of this week, which is 30, add today’s 28 to Monday’s 9, and I’m suddenly ahead. I’m ahead by seven pages. How do I plan for this? How does anyone plan a schedule around something that can jump in one muse-driven moment from a do-nothing week to being ahead of the game? It is a continuous amazement to me, and frustration to the scheduling part of me. Tomorrow, we have plans with Trin, which will eat up much of the day. So, other than working on my speech for the Dracula ballet on Sunday, I’m not even going to try to do any writing. But frustratingly, the book is now going well, and even one day away could leave me on Monday with a cold book, and ashes for inspiration. I’m looking forward to the ballet, and hope that you all find both the talk and the meet and greet afterwards entertaining, but in the end, my job is to write books. Part of me, still sees anything that takes me away from that as a distraction, not a pleasure. So, the ballet this Sunday, and next week the wolf howl, then nothing scheduled. I’ve learned that with a new book hitting the shelves that new things come up, new opportunities to promote the book, and that is part of the job, too. I love meeting everyone at the public events, and how cool is it to be giving a talk before Dracula the Ballet, but I am still looking forward to a space of time when there’s nothing extra planned. I have this book to write, you see, and today the muse was hot to trot. So hot, that when my friend Robin called me late in the day the phone ringing next to me made me scream. I described it to her, as I was concentrating so hard the phone startled me as if I were asleep and it went off right next to my head. When I’m that into the book; life is good.