What I Didn’t Do This Weekend

This weekend was a busy one:

• There was more birthday celebration for another family member.
• There were the cupcakes my elder daughter insisted had to be baked as part of the celebration, and the extra time involved in supervising her, as she wanted to bake them herself.
• There was a mid-year music lesson concert for the kids, who are taking five instruments between them, and so had five separate, albeit short, performances.
• There was the annual meeting of the church, for which I helped with the preparation of the lunch food that was served.
• There was the usual running around to grocery stores, Target, and the like.
• There was a nice five mile run in a -2 degree windchill. Okay, maybe describing that as “nice” is a bit of a stretch. But I was needed and I enjoyed it.

So, quite a lot.

You know what I didn’t do this weekend? I didn’t write.

This may sound strange coming from a writer and self-publishing author, but I didn’t write, didn’t want to, and don’t have any regrets about it.

I finished a first draft of a novel on Friday, after making sure that I was consistently writing for five straight months. And I loved finishing and love the fact that in another five or six weeks I’ll get to go back and tackle it like it’s brand new to me. I love the fact that my head is already moving on to finishing done other editing projects I’ve got in various states. I love the fact that I’ve already got the idea for the next novel in this detective series, and that I’m starting to plot the outline.

But as much as I love it, I also need the break. Stephen King once answered in an interview the question of how often he writes by saying he writes every day but Christmas and his birthday. He gave this answer because it sounded good to him, and because it sounded less crazy that the real answer which was, at the time, every day. That’s great for him. He’s Stephen King after all. But I need the break.

Writing is like anything else, at least for me. I love it, but even though I do love, and often need to do it, like a type of compulsion, I need a break from it, a mini-vacation if you will. I love pizza too, but if I had it every day, I’d eventually hate it.

So here’s to a little time off. I figure in about a week, I’ll be going stir crazy and will dive head first into another project. In the meantime, I think I’ll read a little and catch up on some TV.