Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Juggling Career and Life

With 3 books in various stages from now until June (one to promote, one on the editor's desk, and another to write), I'm balancing time. Some people think I'm organized. I do workshops on writer organization, but this has truly been a season in which I need to take my own advice on Novel Interuptus.

January and February are usually my hard work months, where I pretty well stick to the computer and my stories. That has been difficult to do lately.

The Midwest has just suffered a terrific disaster. Ice everywhere, people going to shelters, and just south of the line by 10-15 miles, we escaped the hit. In our warm homes, we could only watch reports of the ice-covered trees, the sagging and downed powerlines, and ache for those hard-hit. During this time, motels with heat filled up, generators fired up, the National Guard was called in.

Then, a few days later, I drove through some of it and was shocked at the sagging powerlines, coated with ice, the broken trees everywhere, the fields of ice. Yesterday, power companies were at work in the rural areas, and some people have been without power and phone for almost 2 weeks.

Generally, work/writing settles and anchors me. I've hard other writers speak of such a feeling, that they want to be writing and in their stories. Yet while watching (and helping) others caught in this disaster, it was difficult to concentrate on my work.

I'm back into a set of galleys for AT THE EDGE, and working on my website and early PR, but hoping to return soon to the novel I've just begun.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Lois, as you were below the ice line ,we were above it by the same 10-15 miles. Friends have sent us pictures of their homes --it is scary. Looks like a war zone.
Thankfully we did not lose power and the weather then (and now with the snow) is perfect for cuddling up with a good book. Too bad yours is not coming out until June ?

Jill