Now that the Book Tour is Over, I'm Ready for Work!

It has been hard to settle down and return to writing these last few weeks. I returned from my book tour at the beginning of October, and already it’s the middle of November and I’ve written nothing. This is new for me.

Some months ago, a writer friend asked me how I managed to be so disciplined as a writer. I usually spend on average six hours a day, at least five days a week, writing. Not researching or thinking or reading or any of the other tasks that go along with being a novelist, but actual writing.

As my friend explained to me, she had trouble making herself sit down to write. There was always something else to do. Some of them awful things, like laundry. But there were many times, she admitted, that doing laundry was preferable to facing the blank page or getting started on a new scene or rewriting a chapter that really wasn’t working.

But me? For the past decade, I’ve felt compelled to sit down and write by a kind of urgency that I can’t explain. I suffer from a surfeit of nervous energy that seemed to be quelled only by writing sentences and paragraphs and chapters.

But now I have the opposite problem: I have three novels in drafts that need to be edited or partially recast. I have two more novels in my head, begging to get out and down on “paper.” I know what needs to be done with them. But they sit in my desk organizer, waiting for me to get busy.

Why?

We are selling our house in Palm Springs (that's a photo of our living and dining room, above), and we’re moving late next spring out to a home that’s currently under construction in Colorado. Most of my readers have been through this at least once before and know what that means. Culling, sorting, cleaning, and packing. And packing. And packing.

But soon, I’m getting back to writing. And in the meantime, if any of you have a book ready to publish and you need an editor, a book designer, or help self-publishing, let me know. It won’t be long before I’m itching to get back to work.