It isn’t that I have no ideas this morning. It’s that my brain is like a kitten with a ball of wool scraps, and as soon as I unravel one and chase it for a bit, it ends but ooh! there’s another pounce and suddenly I’ve made a mess of my thoughts. Who’s going to clean all of this up?
Which is partly what’s wrong with my recent attempts to write. I can’t focus on one story long enough to immerse myself and get the characters walking and talking in my head so I can start writing their story down. I have so many things fighting for my attention that I just can’t empty my head and let it fill up with story. I know what I need to do. Finding the time to do that…
I was fantasizing this morning about what I would do with a week off. A whole week! Imagine! I could get the diy projects in the house don…er, at least well-started. I could sleep. Sleeping a lot seems like it would be nice. I could get the outside work started. I could… I’m pretty sure a week wouldn’t be enough.
I plan to publish Tanager’s Flight the day after Christmas. I’ve had good beta feedback, the editors have had it, I have a cover ready. I need to spend a bit of time making one more pass to find anything else, and doubtless will also miss a typo while I’m at it, because this is the way. Doesn’t matter how many eyeballs have been over it, there’s always one or two. I have been encouraged it is a good story, though, so I am confident that fans of the series will enjoy it, and I’ve got to get working on the final book of the trilogy in the new year.
In the meantime, I have an impromptu dinner tonight to make sure friends are fed and not lonely. Having community is important, not just to me, but humanity in general. We are a little deranged without it, which you can tell by lurking on the internet and watching people who don’t have anyone real in their life to feed them and tell stories together in the same room, keeping warm while winter’s dark wraps around them. There’s a reason I make the mess and galley the heart of the trading ship I write for the Tanager books, and center life aboard around meals and sharing them. You’d need that, during long voyages from place to place – and you find it in stories of sea travel on this planet, that food was important not just for nourishment but as an anchor to normal life and companionship.
I’ve set a goal to take a vacation in 2025. It won’t be until after the end of March. Far enough away now to be a nebulous, pleasant concept to think about what I might get done with a whole week to do nothing in. In the meantime I have evenings and weekends and a routine to return to. Perhaps the popcorn kittens will all take a nap and I’ll be able to think a bit more clearly. Clearly, I’m capable of wishful thinking, and that’s imagination!
Mad Genius Club 
7 responses to “A Fantasy of Time”
Once the concert/worship push ends, writing, writing, writing. I have just over a week before I need to do some things for Day Job, but even those are not pressing. A few household things will get done, some closet items sorted, but otherwise I am going to sleep and write, after December 25.
A good rest period!
Most summers my hubby would take the kids to grandma’s and I’d stay home with the animals and have my vacation. Later on he would go visit all the kids while I stayed home with the animals, and I would get my vacation. Mostly catching up on chores and DIYs but some watching movies I wanted to see, playing computer games, staying up late and sleeping in late. Just indulging myself. The years that I didn’t/don’t have that I get a little cranky.
That sounds amazing, I’ve never had anything like that.
I know I was lucky with those 3-7 days.
Maybe you can start planning towards that, too. Like you are doing right now!
For about three glorious weeks ahead of here, I am healthy, Peter’s recovering well, no major medical procedures on the schedule, two major paperwork projects wrapping up, DayJob taking its seasonal slowdown…
I am so hoping to write like the wind. I won’t get this story finished by the end of the year, but every chapter is one closer.
Come the new year, I can work back onto the diet. For now, time to feast the turning of the tide, and the brighter days that are coming as solstice falls behind us.
I’m trying to get a story out Christmas Eve. A long short, or a short novella or whatever, and not a Christmas story, but . . .
And then I can relax and cook . . .