Sabbath

At a publishing workshop at the San Juan Island Library a couple of years ago, Cricket Freeman advised would-be-published authors to take time off from writing each week.  At the time I was hell bent on writing every day.  No time to waste in my late fifties, I thought.

I've had time to reflect on Cricket's advice since then.  Cricket Freeman is known for her no-nonsense, even tough, approach to advising aspiring writers.  So why would she of all people say one must take days off?  Because she knows what she's talking about and because the alternative is burn out, that's why.

So, itching to get back to the novel, but knowing a full workday in my other life looms tomorrow, it's time for a day off.  What to do.  Hmmm, I don't think Cricket said one couldn't read on said day off.  I'm reading Fifty Shades Freed, the third in E. L. James' Fifty Shades trilogy.

I want to get through it as fast as possible.  After almost 1400 pages of this stuff, I'm so ready to be done.  It's not the sex.  That part is okay.  It's the writing.  You are what you read to a certain extent, and my fear is contamination of my own writing.  Call me a snob, I probably am.

Secretly, my goal is literary fiction.  But I know my best chance of being published is Women's Light Fiction.  Is it possible to create strikingly original prose and entertain at the same time?  I hope so.

In addition to enduring the last of Fifty Shades, there's plenty to do around the house, the feeding the goose stuff.  Ugh.  But that wouldn't be much of a day off.  Going into town is too much like a work day.  So, the quest is to find something fun, preferably physical, out in the woods on a rainy day.

Tally Ho!

More later.