The house is quiet this morning.

The kids’ winter break started on December 21. I modified my schedule so that any work was more of the “clean up/set up/prepare/shallow dive” variety. Noise and festivities do not make for sustained writing.

It’s been a phenomenal break. We all exhaled, enjoyed, celebrated, and overindulged. I said yes (YES!) to things that, during the normal school year, usually get my hearty no. I worked through piles of magazines and books.

Play and rest. Until we hit today. 

Today, the GET GOING OH MY GOD WE’RE SO BEHIND AND THIS THING IS SUPER IMPORTANT AND I’VE JUST BEEN WAITING TO SEND IT TO YOU AND NOW IT’S ALMOST TOO LATE! emails fly in from everywhere and anything child-related. School. Extra-curricular. Even summer camps. SUMMER camps. It’s January and, if the hype is to be believed, there are only two slots left in the entire tri-state area.

I’m working, though. I feel cautious and strangely aware of how lucky I am to get to do this for a living.

One of my 2019 writing goals is to get 50 rejections from places I respect on pieces that I work on. (I mean, it’s easy to get rejections on shitty work or from places I don’t care about.) I’ve got some editing to do, some submissions to make, then back to the novel on or about the 17th (a month after I completed the first draft). I’ll need to make a plan, of how to edit, what to edit, and in what order, and then do it. Somehow.

I had to figure out how to write the book, now I have to figure out how to rewrite the book.

It’s a little scary, like cleaning out that one closet that you’ve been avoiding because you know there’s just a giant pile of crap in there, but you suspect there’s a treasure or two if you’re willing to put your back into it. Or throw your back out. One of those two things.

Right now, I’m missing the kiddos, the ease of routine, the pancakes eaten leisurely, the sleeping in, the cozy of vacation. How little was scheduled and how nothing was overscheduled.

But that’s what weekends are for. I’m trying to use those differently in 2019, too, to keep them more vacation-like. Ruined, still, by the absolutely noxious skeet shooting down the street, but that’s another issue for another time.

Have a wonderful week! I’ll let you know if I get to add to my rejection tally sheet.