Loving the day job

This week, I love my day job. Why? It’s SUCH a great distraction. I finished my rewrites on Saturday, working through the plot issues I talked about in episode 22, and sent it off to a couple of readers. I found the query letter I worked up for a workshop and as a plotting exercise last year, and it turns out it’s pretty good. Then — against all advice — I opened up my manuscript on my e-reader to give it a full read through to get a big-picture look.

There’s a reason the advice all says to let your work rest for a week or more. In the space of five hours — the time between sending off my MS to some readers and reading the first page of my book — I went from “I FINISHED MY BOOK!” to “EVERYTHING IS TERRIBLE FOREVER.”

So thank goodness for my day job. Monday morning, I pulled up the book I had queued to index, and one of my business partners passed another one to me, so I’m busy. With things that have nothing to do with my book, and things that keep me too busy to touch my book. Also, 3 of the 4 of us in my family are sick (I must be psychic), so I’m definitely cutting out any non-essential work. And right now, my book is non-essential.

I’m still writing, though, following the advice from next week’s guest to touch the work every day (y’all are going to LOVE her and that episode). It’s super-hard for me to get back into a routine when I’ve let it slide, so I want to keep up my early mornings. I’ve started working through Ursula K. LeGuin’s Steering the Craft, with an eye to a short story I started last spring. Today, I haven’t done anything but this post, but it counts.

And now, back to my day job.

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