The Day After

What does a writer do once she's finished a book? Well, yesterday my royal family friends came over for our regular Wednesday lunch and I had a wonderful, stimulating/relaxing time of fellowship. After that, I did the blog post, did Bible class, went for a walk and got caught up on my TV shows. Well, except for 24 which somehow didn't get recorded after all. (We have more trouble with the DVD recorder! Come to think of it we had trouble with the VCR as well..)

Today I went across town to pick up my new glasses, which it turns out I can't wear, though I tried for a couple of hours, had to take them off, tried again for a few more hours and finally my head was hurting so much, my eyes were aching, and I felt so sick and dizzy I had to take them off again and call the eye doctor. So tomorrow I have to drive across town again. When you have a mountain of things facing you (clean the bathroom before plants begin to take root in the dust, pay the credit card bill... uh... find the credit card bill, get groceries, vacuum, etc, etc) two hours of driving doesn't really fit into the schedule. But I've learned nothing last year if not the fact that I do not rule the schedule. Flexibility is the word of the day. Every day. At least when I go I can drop off some bookmarks at the Christian bookstore on that side of town. If I can remember to bring them...

Anyway, once home, while trying to wear those glasses, I started in on getting my contest winners notified and the books readied -- I'll have to get some mailers before I can go any further, though. After that I started looking for printing companies to print up the post cards that I want to send out for Return of the Guardian-King (henceforth, RotGK). I could use the online printer I've used for the bookmarks, but it occurred to me that if I stay with a local business I won't have to pay shipping. I think. That's what I'm looking into.

I also want to change newsletter services, so that means I'll have to look into that. The prospect of moving my mailing list to a new service is scary, but at the same time the service I have is very annoying. It's a pain to use and I keep having subscribers who are getting only a paragraph of the newsletter. Did I mention that I'm going to have to write up another newsletter for February? Soon? That's just at the head of the very long list of "book promotion" things I want to do. As I'm contemplating all this, I'm realizing it's very likely more than I can hope to do. It might help to approach the mountain with that in mind... I tend to think things will take, oh, maybe half an hour at the most. I have no idea why I have this delusion. It never turns out that way. Well, rarely.

This is the part of the writing life that I think I'm still trying to deny. I'm a writer. I should spend my time writing. When I finish a book, I should get some time to relax and fill the well with reading and puttering around, get caught up on housework and home projects. Reaquaint myself with friends and relatives. Yeah, yeah, there's a bit of the promotional stuff to do -- the post cards, the giveaways, email. But that stuff, that's minor. That should only take a half an hour. Max. So why am I here in this chair again? And why have I spent an awful lot of hours today sitting in it, when I haven't really been writing?

I definitely need to rethink all this... It probably has something to do with the human mind's capacity to hold two completely antithetical thoughts at the same time. That is, at one point in in time you can absolutely believe that "A" is true, and three hours later, in a different contest, absolutely believe that "Anti-A" is true, even though you would still adhere to A if asked. You just never think of A and Anti-A at the same time, so you don't realize what you're doing.

Or maybe that's just a long, wordy way to describe denial.

Grace,
Karen