January 5, 2008

One of the worst things about being in the home stretch on any piece of work is the temptation to rush it. I really have to slow myself down to make sure I'm hitting all the high notes and the low notes and everything in between. The benefit of being sick, however, is that I really don't have the strength to go out and do normal things. That trip to the drug store? It can wait. Need to stock up on food? Nah, I'll just eat this bag of chips. Which means I can start work relatively early, as I did this morning at 8:30, and still be at it well into the evening, because there are no obligations that matter, apart from getting the work done.

No wonder the days slip by and it starts to seem like I haven't seen the real world for days and sometimes weeks. I just realized I've been writing full time, more or less, for about 20 years, starting with A Cage of Bones in 1986, A Simple Song (unpublished) in 1990, The Honey Locust (TBP next year) starting around 1994, as well as three years of plays and three more of filmscripts, followed by the first three Bradford books (2005, 2006, 2007), and now Lake on the Mountain. I may have to re-title this blog 'A Writer's Half-Life.'