There have been two big goals going on for me in February. One of these has been difficult to miss. For the past three weeks I’ve been blathering about my Kickstarter campaign to fund the self-publishing of my book, Swedish Lessons. If you haven’t heard about it, perhaps you have been comatose, or delivering a ring to Mordor, or temporarily living among wolves. If so — welcome back! — and here’s where you can get all caught up: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/natalieburg/swedish-lessons-a-memoir/
So anyway, the other, less visible goal this month has to been to finish the final edits on the book so I can get right into the publishing process after the campaign, should it be successful. With 18 chapters to edit and 28 days in the month, there should be plenty of time, right?
Oops. See, there’s all of this other work I do, for all of these various publications that pay me to write things with deadlines and whatnot, so guess what gets priority at the end of each day?
Yup. That’s the thing about us self-employed, creative types. Even though we’re supposedly in charge of our own time and able work on our pet projects at our leisure, we’re constantly allowing our time to be in charge of us, and those projects we care most about to be continually put off. And that about sums up the last three weeks of my editing efforts
When I got caught in similar cycle last year, trying to write a book proposal in the midst of everyday work, I found a solution in dropping everything for a long weekend, going away and having my own personal writing retreat.
So guess where I am now? It took me 8.5 hours to drive 250 miles in a blizzard to get here, but I, my tiny car and my two ginormous, totally stressed out dogs made it to the Far Michigan Northiness where I’ll spend the next two days writing myself silly. The dogs have big plans too, but theirs mostly involve playing in the snow, napping and farting.
With any luck, I’ll return to my hamster wheel on Monday with a fully-edited Swedish Lessons, ready to embrace one last week of stalking the entire Internet with reminders about my Kickstarter campaign.
So! Three, two, one…go! After I sleep. Today was a long, long, very long, day.
Natalie Burg 