Eleven Days!

Until what, Bree? Until your global publication? Until JK Rowling comes to give you your first million dollar paycheck? Well, now I've just set myself up for disappointment. Because it's just eleven days until Christmas break and about a thousand days of doing absolutely nothing. Okay, more like two weeks, but after a few days of doing nothing, it seems to be neverending. So at least I'll have something constructive to do this Christmas break.

I started rereading my book (for the upteenth time) and I'm barely into chapter two, but there's already a thousand mistakes I've caught (in case you haven't noticed, I exaggerate numbers a lot). So I'm going through it slowly, even though I have that strange deadline in the back of my head. But it is helping. I've been going back through my super rough outline for the second book and changing things, and with each change I make, I smile a bit more. I can't believe how much I've forgotten from the few months of my last editing. There was a point in chapter one where I actually said to myself, Oh, yeah, I forgot I put that guy in there. I wonder if all authors go through this when they read their earlier books or even when they're writing a sequel. Or I wonder if they have those minds like a sponge, where they retain every single word they've ever written. Because, if they do, what jerks. I can barely remember my phone number, much less what I wrote a year ago.

Then there's the beautiful problem that is my brain. And fingers, really, if we want to get technical about it. I mean, they don't have to write what my brain tells them to. If my brain says, Hey, I know that we're supposed to be concentrating on your actual book, the one that you think is pretty good, but I think that we should start this other one, okay? Right now. And my fingers just comply. Such followers. So those two tag teamed me and wrote 4,000 words over the weekend. And that's just one scene. Then there's the outline. Oh, yes, my fingers and brain made an outline of this stupid story with no real plot, but with only a couple of scenes strung together to make...something. But that doesn't necessarily mean that I should write it. I love to write every day, but it's usually just something stupid, just to keep my hand in it, so to speak. Which I guess is what this is doing. But I don't want to fall in love with it. I don't want to write more and then say, Gosh, I guess I should abandon everything I've been working on and go with this! Does this seem familiar? Because it should be.

You know what, though? I think I'm going to take a break from all the writing and do something truly constructive: decorate for Christmas. Because that is truly what I should be doing, since I just finished making mint chocolate chip cupcakes and my entire apartment smells like peppermint (the whole two feet of my apartment). Besides, the mess I've made from pulling out Christmas decorations is beginning to make me tremble inside.