At some point this summer--after I finished the spring semester and before I began teaching the summer class--I stopped working on my current novel. I guess "delayed" is a better term. I always feel guilty and grumpy (the "two G's," as in Mom has "the two G's") when I don't/can't carve the time to write a few pages.
I've consoled myself by considering other kinds of writing (blogging, commenting, letter-writing, check-writing, password-typing, etc) as useful and necessary. But I do need to learn to balance my novel-writing time not only with family time, but also with non-novel writing time.
This whole marketing pre-publication business made me very uncomfortable this past week. "What?! Ask my friends and family to actually buy my novel? Egads." (It's what several marketing books and author sites say is non-negotiable. It makes me feel "eek.")
But I've crafted a note, with as much humor as possible, to my F&F (friends and family). Half the letters are sent. I have to get over feeling weird about it, I guess, and hope no one thinks our friendship is based on their expressing any interest in my work. Just wanted to document this tottering step in the publishing process.
