Enforced Rest

I could finally run again this morning! It was chilly, nasty, and damp; Miss B kept trying to kill me, but I persevered. Taking a week off while my body fought a book I shouldn’t have been writing and a furious cold caught at a train station might have been good for healing, but I was tied in several knots by this morning.

I’m still tense, but not entirely murderous.

Over the weekend I used the enforced rest to finish revisions on Sparked–the first book of the YAs my agent wanted me to write just for her. I believe she has plans that involve shopping them to publishers, but that’s outside my field of vision right now. I’m still not sure I want to get involved with YA publishing again. But may gent knows best, and in any case, I wanted to write something just for her. My version of a gift, since I find present-giving (and receiving) utterly charged circumstances unless my children are recipients. Anyone else, anxiety kicks in. So I write books for people I love, and it doesn’t seem to turn out half bad.

Anyway, Miss B is finally calm, with all her week’s worth of fidgets worked out. I am not nearly as calm, but I can tell I’ll sleep tonight. What I’ll do when may body decides it can no longer run, who can tell? I might expire of insomnia and sheer irritation at that point. Today, though, the plan is red sauce (the beginnings of said sauce are beginning to smell divine) and laundry–and moonlighting with the nutless kangaroo story. Said story choked up 2K yesterday, while I was supposed to be resting in a post-revision blur.

They never do what you want, stories. They twist and turn and sometimes bite. I swear I will NOT turn this story into a book, it’s a novella at most. (The characters trying to crowd in to get their POVs heard are laughing at me.)

Odd Trundles is exhausted from his weekend too. It involved a thorough washing, never one of his favorite things. It also involved irrigating his sore paw with hydrogen peroxide. If it takes bathing his toes in that shit daily, that’s what I’ll do. It’s a good thing I love his cranky, creaky, snoring little self.

So. I have a tankard of hot Earl Grey, my favorite sweater, and the smell of oregano-heavy tomatoes is wafting through the house.

Over and out.