Sometimes you get caught in a certain pattern and don’t realize you’ve got trapped.
I’ve been working too much and getting just about nothing accomplished. Part of this is that I tend to do this when there are to many demands from disparate locations coming at me. I want to do everything and end up doing nothing.
In this case, it’s trying to get things setup for the holiday and my official (we have two anniversaries. Long story) Silver Anniversary coming up while trying to finish a book. Nothing is set up and the book was just not progressing at all. But worse of all, I felt like all joy had gone out of my life.
So I called my editor – I’ve worked for her for eleven years, she knows the book will come – and asked her if I can send it in in January, on the tenth. She said sure.
I hate doing this, but I don’t think I would survive this next week otherwise, and I suspect the book would still be not done.
So I’m taking a vacation for two weeks. It is the first vacation I’ve taken for a long time. Mind you, the next two days will be cleaning and setting up so the house is ready when the guys come home for the holidays that start on Friday for them. BUT it’s a change of pace. I’m going to sleep late, and then clean tomorrow and then maybe go visit my friend Charles at the bookstore and get a bunch of truly trashy books (Yay!).
What are you guys doing in the next two weeks? Do you try to write when you have vacation? Or is it free time? And do you ever get in the frame of mind that you’re trying to do everything and don’t realize you’re killing yourself?
Crossposted @ Mad Genius Club
According To Hoyt 
I’m definitely writing this holiday season–and I’ve got family coming in for Christmas Eve! They’ll just have to stay in two rooms and not open any doors.
Like you, I’m my most unproductive when I’m overscheduled. My solution is to do only the things I want to do and then let the others blow up. I’ve survived every time!
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As to extending the deadline — if the manuscript arrives in mid to late December it’s a pretty safe bet nobody’s going to look at it until January anyway.
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Cambias,
THAT’s what I figured.
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That’s what you think! And I suppose you think those ghosts with their chains and little flashes of vision are going to change things? HAH! Nose to the grindstone, let’s see those words FLY!
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