End of June

This has been a particularly busy summer for me, in spite of not working and not being in school, and I have to admit yet again that I did not meet my writing goal for the month. I’ve been working on a scholarly essay that I hope to get published through a children’s lit journal and I have a deadline for that. This comes at the same time as packing up and cleaning the house to move, and trying to soak up our Fairbanks friends and Fairbanks itself before we leave – possibly forever. I did force myself to get my 10 submissions in, and I spent the average of a little over half an hour a day on creative writing (but all of that time was spent at the beginning of the month – the past two weeks I’ve only been working on my essay).

Considering that my essay must be in the editor’s email inbox by July 17th, and we’ll be on the road making our way through Canada and across the US during the entire month of July, I’ve made the difficult but I think only reasonable decision not to set any creative writing goals for myself for next month. This is the first time I haven’t set any goals for a month for, oh, I don’t even know how long, and it’s a strange feeling, like not really being a writer. But I don’t see any way around it. I have to focus on this essay right now – this is a great opportunity and it would be foolish to let it pass. On top of that, I’ll be visiting family that I haven’t seen in years and going on this amazing road trip . . . I think it would be a real mistake to hamper myself with self-imposed creative writing goals.

Once we get settled in Ohio in August I plan to buckle down and get that momentum back up again. I had dinner with the professor who was my thesis advisor last night and she encouraged me to start sending my thesis around to agents soon. She reminded me that you keep working on it after you get an agent and after that agent gets you a publisher. It doesn’t have to be perfect to start trying. So I’ve decided that I’m going to do one more revision after we arrive in Ohio and then I’m going to start submitting it. I have to just draw the line somewhere or else I’ll keep picking at it forever and never send it out. So a lot of great things on the horizon, and maybe it’s just as well to take a bit of a break and come at it refreshed after the move.