writer tips

by Kimberly A. Cook                                               (Twitter@ WarriorTales)

True confessions time. Last weekend I put my book in a box. Literally. I took it off my desk and put it in a plastic container with a lid and stuck it in a corner. We both need a time out. Now some writers might think I am avoiding hard work or procrastinating or all of the above. Probably.

However, when I am avoiding my entire home office because the manuscript is in there, it’s telling me something else is going on with the book. Like, maybe I don’t want to write this book at all. Forget the fact it is a second edition, originally published in 2006, it’s almost done – except for all the final grunt work.

A big part of this is the “been there, done that” where’s the new hot spicy fun stuff part. But a bigger part I am coming to realize is after specializing in my military niche for 16 years, its wearing a little thin on me or I am too thin in the creativity department right now. Think both apply.

Rather than slog through the grunt work and produce a second edition book with mediocre updates, I decided to give both of us recess time. Immediately felt better. Yes, the siren call of my other fiction and non-fiction manuscripts are luring me, but right now my right brain wants to do one thing; knit.

So that is what I am going to do for a while, be a creative knitter, write my blog posts, take pictures and see what happens. Maybe my muse needs a sabbatical summer to get itself in gear again. Or maybe there are bigger shifts afoot here in writer brain land. It’s been a bumpy eight months for me for various reasons and I think all the parts of my brain want a summer sojourn.

Warm summer evenings spent swinging in the lawn swing and knitting up a storm may be just what my muse needs to refresh and reinvigorate itself. Or maybe it is making grand plans I have no inkling about. One never knows.

Have you ever put your work in a box or drawer for a time and then gotten back to it? Was it fermenting or decomposing or growing in there? My quirky mind would like to know!