Playing Hooky

Happy New Year all!

I have a confession – I took a month off.  December to be exact. Not all of it, but most. I hadn’t intended on doing that. What I had intended was to put the nose to the grindstone, get lots of writing done while on vacation from the day job over the holidays and make massive headway on A HINT OF SCANDAL, the last book in the SINS & SCANDALS Series.

I did none of those things. I tried, but my brain kept sputtering out. My attention span ambled off to parts unknown. My drive to put said nose to said grindstone took a lengthy hiatus. None of these things seemed inclined to return with any kind of swiftness. Their departure left a bit of a gaping hole I was having difficulty filling. At first, I tried to force the issue. Demanded my get up and go hustle on back and get itself back to work. A demand that was summarily rejected and overruled by my brain that wanted to muck about and…play.

Play?

We have no time to play! We have a deadline for crying out loud! I stamped my foot, fired off my most withering death glare and waited for everyone to fall back in line. 

Nothing happened. Nada. Zip. I was politely informed that everyone was taking a vacation. Starting now. This moment. And until further notice. Negotiations ensued. I offered them a week, they suggested six months. I countered with a week and two days. They reminded me that I was running on fumes, that I was neglecting a million other important things and focusing only on one. I reminded them that we had worked really hard to get where we are and had to keep it up or lose it all. They suggested my catastrophic thinking was a little ridiculous and short-sighted. It went back and forth until finally we came to an agreement: I would take off the month of December. We would all get back to work once the holidays were over. We would finish the book.

Then I would take six months off and work on something completely different. Write a the book I had been percolating for months on end that was far outside my wheelhouse. I would rediscover the creativity and play of venturing into foreign territory without a compass. 

And so here we are – back to work after a much needed mental break (I hate it when my brain is right…) and looking forward to finishing A HINT OF SCANDAL then diving off the edge into a creative pool to learn how to swim again. 

Kelly