I have a story ready to send off to a contest, the deadline is a day away. I am dying to send it right now and get it off my plate and my screen. I have also been working on some very finicky stipulations for querying an agent in the UK with my current novel. I want to get that out of my hair too.
I tend to rush these things, not sure if you do, and then I notice a typo, or something occurs to me in an “oh I should have mentioned that” way and by then it is too late. Sometimes I think I am self-sabotaging, but other times, in times when I am kinder to myself I think I am just still that impatient kid of years, no, decades, gone by.
I encourage my students to always sleep on it and I have to take my own medicine.
So I hope to start working on a second draft of a poetry collection that I have been putting together for some time. It’s unique and radical. It will be a game changer in what I put out to the world if anyone publishes it. I want to give it a thorough once-over and then, like bread that has been kneaded and pummeled, let it sit, while I go back to the second draft of a novel which first draft happened in the first part of this year.
Yes, the back and forth between projects. (What is "block..."?) And the wondering about having given each what it needs. The sleep on it. The sharing it with some trusted reader. Even to push yourself out the door for a last minute mulling walk before you really press "send" can be useful.
Really good to see your newsletter here, Andrew!