What I Learned on my Autumn Vacation

So, 25 days early, here I am, sitting down at the ole’ compy with a cup of tea and Janis Joplin (Pearl) on the Wi-fi Hi-fi. I’m feeling slightly sheepish about coming back so early, but mostly relieved. I need blogging like I need bad black tea. Not like, I’ll die without it, but I get grumpy and engage in bizarre behavior until life returns to normal.

My time off was a learning experience. It’s the first time I’ve ever taken time off as a writer and the biggest, most important thing I learned is that it’s a useless undertaking. Unless I’m actually not in a place where written communications of any kind can reach me (ie, comatose), I’m still working. This is because other people don’t stop working just because I decided to take time off. And, as it turns out, I need to do a considerable amount of work even though I’m not, technically, working. I even caught myself the other day thinking, “Phew, good thing I’ve got all this extra time to get this writing stuff done”. Thanks, brain. Thanks for feeding my delusion there. Just what I needed.

So here’s what I’ve been doing while I’ve been away:

1. Planning a one-to-one book give away. I need your help for this. I’d like to, for a few days in December, give books away to libraries. It would work like this: You buy a book, and I give a copy of the same book away to a publicly-funded library of your choice, be it a school or municipal library, anywhere in Canada. This sounds great, and I want to do it, but there’s one small problem.

Booksellers, unfortunately, don’t report the number of books sold for some time. Amazon, for example, reports every 90-120 days. That means there’s no way for me to know how many books sold when till, oh, springtime. I thought about getting people to send me the copy of their receipt, but that means renting a post box. Any solutions you guys might have are welcome. The sooner I sort out the logistics, the sooner we can do a big book giveaway.

2. Twittering. I’m a boring person but I’ve become addicted to twittering mundanity. I realized, in fact, that I’ve started narrating my boring life rather than actually doing stuff, which is bad. The twittering. I need to get it under control.

3. Fighting with a publisher. This just started today and is the single most demoralizing thing I’ve faced thus far in publishing. I feel like they’re hamstringing me. They probably think I’m a whiny prima donna. I really hope we can get this sorted out quickly. It seems stupid to waste my time doing a contract-acceptable contortion act when I could be writing more books.

Incidentally, I think this marks the birth of my sense of security as a writer. I’m no longer pitifully grateful to find someone who likes my work enough to publish it, which is the way I’ve been so long that it feels like a natural position to be in. Instead of trying to keep people from noticing that my work is somehow in the “accepted” pile, now I’m starting to think more about sales and my reputation. Yeah, weird. It surprised me too.

4. Yelling at stories. If you haven’t seen Elizabeth Gilbert’s Ted talk, you should go get a cup of something warm and sit down for a few.
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OK, so now that you’ve seen that, me yelling and wagging my index finger like a drunk trying to make a point and hold a glass at the same time makes, perhaps, a little more sense. I realized I have seven settings I want to write in, two novels I’m drying to write, and two I want to re-write, and they’re all trying to happen at once.

No wonder I get nothing done. Anyway, I did some yelling. I told them to form an orderly queue and I’d get to each and every one of them in turn, and I feel better now. More importantly, I don’t feel like stories are trying to jackhammer their way out of my brain, and that sounds like success to me.

5. Pretending I don’t miss blogging, writing, and karate. And secretly planning on coming back to all three early. Very sneaky.

6. Oh yeah! And having my birthday! Thanks for all the tweets, the emails and the calls!