In bliss

rain, cool, temps 19

Not a bad day - rain didn't start until about 1pm. Went for a walk with the dogs this morning, then had breakfast on the screen porch then to work. Michael worked in the living room too, on his laptop, and I worked on mine.

I'm at the amazing, blessed stage where I'm totally enjoying the book and the process. I love doing it, and the only reason I stop everyday is because I get tired. There's no fear anymore.

I've come to realize how riddled my life can be with fear - and how crippling that is. It's both a weight and a barrier. Fear stands between me and inspiration, creativity, gratitude, enjoyment. It's not always 'nightfall', but more like a perpetual twilight, of semi-enjoyment, of bliss sampled then placed just out of reach.

But when fear is gone, wow. Even if the book is crap - and I know now it won't be - but even if it is, at least I'm loving writing it.

I almost always reach this stage in the books - sometimes sooner, sometimes later. But once achieved it so far has stayed with me for the rest of the process - until I have to show the book to someone other than Michael. Then night falls.

But I'm not there now.

Today I worked for about 4 hours, and would have worked more but we wanted to visit a few artist friends on the Tour des Arts and today is the last day.

I think that's also a big part of my enjoyment - I'm being far more reasonable about the editing. Taking my time, not riding myself so hard. There is no way this book won't be written and ready by the deadline. And even if it isn't, well, worse things have happened. Losing the pleasure of writing is a 'worse thing'.

Last year I practically killed myself to get book 4 written/edited/polished and to Teresa my agent before the end of the summer, so that we could go on the world tour. For various reasons she chose not to give it to the editors until November anyway - they took a month or more to get back to me, then even longer to give me the notes and I was still doing their edits in April, when I'd hoped to be enjoying a month off in London.

I think that shattered my nerves a bit. Now I've decided to just slow down, write and edit to my needs and see what happens. The editors are reasonable people - and I'm hoping they'd rather have a healthy, creative, inspired and happy writer producing a good (perhaps even great) book - than a mess churning out drivel.

However, there is a lot about the publishing industry that is surprising me, so I could be wrong about that.

But for now I'm in absolute heaven with this book.

Hope you're enjoying yourselves too and getting a chance to re-new yourselves this summer. You probably don't need me to say it, since I'm fairly new to the concept myself but - be kind to yourself.