a day of the fidgets

Current work: admin
Listening to: Sandy Denny
Reading: Forgotten, Cat Patrick (nice debut – loved the premise behind this, i.e. the heroine couldn’t remember her past but she could remember forwards)

Lovely ed emailed me yesterday to say that second revs are going to hit today. So there’s no point in me getting too deeply into writing another book, because I’ll need to switch worlds in my head back to the book that needs revisions. (Please, please, please don't let them be huge.)

It’s half term next week and we have a lot lined up. Although I can write new stuff first thing in the morning while the kids are still asleep, when it comes to revisions I need something completely different: a quiet and empty house, a decent chunk of time (aka 8.45-2.15) ti work, and I’ll working on paper rather than on screen.

This is why I have the fidgets particularly badly today. I know I have work to do, I know my time is going to be limited to do said work, and there's nothing I can do except wait. It’s like waiting for a dental appointment when you suspect root canal work is going to be mentioned. (I know, I know, I sound like a diva today. Ask any other author, and I bet they'll say they feel the same - the longer the revisions take to come back to you, the more you build it up in your mind, and it's when you kind of regret having an imagination. And they will also admit to checking their email six million times - and then the spam box, in case the ISP is having a bad day and ate ed's email.)

So I need to be busy, but I don’t want to start writing and have to break off. There are three things I need to tackle at the top of my to-do list. The first is to tidy my office, which I’ve been putting off for months and it’s B-A-D. (I’m saving that for next week, when my strange-child-who-actually-likes-tidying is home and has promised to help me. This is probably going to cost me in Monsoon, but I can live with that.) The second is some fairly important admin (i.e. it will affect my finances – not filing, which goes in the same category of ‘tidy office’ and is actually most of the reason why office isn't tidy). The third is updating my website, which I've neglected and only done the bare minimum on since the autumn, when Real Life got very much in the way.
This morning I’ve updated my website. (Hand-coding stuff is great for distraction. You have to concentrate, so you can't think about revisions.) This afternoon, it’s the admin. And then, depending on whether the revisions arrive before I have to leave for the school run, I’ll either print out the book so I can red-pen it in the car, or I’ll take the next book off my TBR pile to read while I’m waiting for littlest to come out of school.