Busy

I’ve hit a dry spell of late on this blog, and it bugs me because this is the place where I come to be just me. I’m not someone’s teacher, editor, or publisher; I’m simply a writer who loves writing about docs and what goes on under the white curtain where patients have no jurisdiction.

I think my dry spell comes from being overcommitted. My literary heart now serves two masters. One, of course, is my beloved Donovan series. Kim and Erik will always be The Grand Twinkie in my writing pantry. After a published novel and three more outlined in the series, they are real. I only wish they did windows and cooked – two things I hate the most.

My other master is a writer’s guide about the publishing industry – The Writer’s Essential Tacklebox – what every writer needs to know to succeed. Yeah, yeah, I realize the bookshelves are already filled with the “Oo, oo, buy me, I know more!” but honestly, no one has written a book like this. It’s a ground-buster. So much so, that I have a veddy hoo ha agent who’d like to rep it. The original plan was to pub it with our company, and we still may. But if this wonderfully sardonic agent can get me a serious advance – you know, the kind that we can’t afford to pay – then I’m just as slutty as the next writer and, for a price, I can be bought.

I have the outline for the Tacklebox and am excited about jumping in and getting it finished. In fact, it’s pretty time sensitive at this point – as in, CEO/hubby sez, “Honey buns, get that damn book finished so we can get it on the market.” Yes, dear.

Thing is, I miss Kim and Erik. I dumped them in the middle of the Amazon rainforest with all sorts of oddball characters (including a very inquisitive shaman). Kim faces some serious challenges that threaten her surgical career, and, oddly enough, it’s Erik that comes to the rescue, dragging his feet the entire way. I love these two knuckleheads, and it’s hard to put them in my Save file.

Add to this, my daily chores of being editorial director to one and all, and I have finger freeze – meaning that nothing gets written. I have a stack of reading that’s also growing more time sensitive by the minute. Prioritizing has become a matter of who screams the loudest. Hardly an effective management tool.

I’ve decided I need some clones. One would be my manuscript reader for the biz. The other would write rejection letters. Another would work on Kim and Erik while still another would tackle the Tacklebox. I realize the damage and devastation having too many Lynns would engender, and that’s probably why God thinks cloning is a rotten idea.

I wonder if God would mind giving me just one extra Lynn. Forget business; she’d be the one out shopping for impractical shoes.