One and a Half Hours a Day

I'm three days in to my new work regimen, launched after my return from New Jersey on Monday. This is the plan to write not an hour a day, as the name of my blog recommends, but a full two hours a day, in order to make my deadline of producing two 125-page books by September 15 to meet the deadlines of my Random House contract.

The plan is to write two hours on my books each day, and to do ONE other thing from my work-related to-do list, plus keep my life going generally (pay bills, answer emails, buy tickets to the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, walk with Rowan, take Christopher to his doctor's appt down at University Hospital in Denver for his neck injury, help make plans for Grandpa's funeral, brush my cat - for now I've given up on Moby Dick, but more on that later.)

So far I haven't been able to do it. I did write for one and a half hours on my book on Tuesday, plus wrote comments on a colleague's teaching statement for his upcoming comprehensive review. Wednesday I also wrote for one and a half hours, plus wrote two book reviews for the Children's Literature database. But today I was caught off guard by a FedEx delivery of the first book in the series, with a long editorial letter calling for another (final?) round of revisions. I had already crossed this book off my list, so it was a shock to my system to have it reappear. Luckily, I can work almost endlessly doing revisions, so I toiled mightily all day long (well, for three solid hours), and just emailed it back to her, a much better book. However, alas, I didn't write a single syllable of the current book-in-progress or do a single thing from my work-related to-do list.

It's 6:45 p.m. now. Should I try to do at least something else on some other project, so that I can say I did? Or just congratulate myself on yet another round of revisions done and off my desk? I'm inclining toward the second option.

Off for some self-congratulation involving what's left of a pound bag of Hershey's cherry cordial kisses.