Several things are happening in approximately one week. Firstly, I should hear from the Appalachian Writer's Workshop about whether I was accepted. Secondly, I have to have my 20 pages ready for distribution for the Tinker Mountain Writer's Workshop. (I will also hopefully have my state test scores for work as well). Time has been moving at an odd pace here lately as it is, and I don't even want to imagine how this week is going to go considering the things I have pending.
A writing deadline will make time race forward at a break neck pace. Seeing a date come hurdling at me through space will push words out of my brain through my fingers faster than anything else. At this point, since I really don't have to be writing, but editing, I'm hoping it will push corrections and restructuring ideas at me super quickly. Writing (or editing) toward an encroaching deadline will move a week by at a frightening pace.
Waiting to hear news always drags time out by it's tail at an interminable rate. The thought that I have to continue to agonize over the tremendously huge (OK, fairly small) error I found in my application manuscript is like a mosquito bite of the worst kind. Big, fat, swollen and itchy. I scratch at it until it is sore and whelped up the size of a golf ball.
This vortex is mind numbing. I feel like I'm being pulled in a million directions.This is an odd purgatory that I will be relieved to escape.
My mind keeps coming back to the Young Adult novel I started at Hindman last year. I know I'm supposed to be working on Death Stories for both the editor and for Tinker Mountain. I know I have a fantasy novel I started five years ago, that has the potential to be breakout good, if I would ever get myself in gear and just finish it. But my mind keeps dragging back to those teenagers, trying to figure themselves out in a world that is forcing them to make choices beyond their age to make. Perhaps it is just my students (and their problems) forcing their way into my mind, making me think it is the characters. This has been the most challenging and rewarding school year I've ever taught. I will never, ever, forget my babies from this year. Working with seniors SUCKS! In eleven more school days they are going to leave me.
Know these feelings well. Kind of like waiting for an overdue flight. You can't relax and forget about it or you may miss the take-off! Or worse, waiting for word can be like waiting for your teenager to come in late at night. You are afraid of what comes in the door yet overjoyed they made it back. Good luck!
ReplyDeleteDo you think you'll get a decent amount of writing time in this summer? What do you plan for the kids while you're writing? Just one mom of toddlers in need of writing time asking another for tips here... So you have three projects in mind. It can be such a difficult thing to put aside one inspiration for another sometimes.
ReplyDeleteMy entire summer is going to be spent writing. I will also be writing a curriculum for my mythology class as well as my creative writing classes, but mostly I'll be writing for me. Definitely going to Tinker Mountain, hopefully going to Hindman, and still haven't heard back from Blue Ridge. Lucky for me, my babysitter likes to stay employed during the summer, and my job automatically pays me on a 12 month schedule. So to get my writing time, I simply take the kids to the sitter three days a week. We save money by not going five, and I save sanity by getting time away from my kids and writing. I am just not the stay at home type...it would not be good for either me or the kids. I truly admire stay at home moms, whether they work from home or not, because I just couldn't do it. The two weeks we got off for snow about killed us all. So I have no sage words. I am definitely finding it hard to decide what to do. Because I will be working on Death Stories for TMWW and hoepfully for Hindman, plus editing to send to the person interested, I think I'm going to spend all extra time on the Young Adult novel. The fantasy novel will be there waiting for me when I'm ready. I have around 200 pages and actually know the plot structure of the story, including two others to make a trilogy.
ReplyDelete