Break Time

Well, on April 17th, I defended my dissertation, which is the book I’m currently working on: As Many Roast Bones As You Need. I passed! Since I turned in the book to my committee members at the very end of February, I’ve kept my distance from it. I’ve draft a few essays and I’m 5 pages into a 19-page comic. I’ve also been revising my book proposal. I hope to have it perfect in June to renew my agent querying. Of course, things have been hectic with the pandemic and the usual issues of separating oneself from, well, not nice people. In some ways, I feel like I’ve done nothing. I’m not submitting work. I’m not working as hard as I was when finishing my dissertation. But I’m enjoying the work I’ve been doing. It’s getting better. And I find that for the first time in months I’m having ideas. About the book. About other projects. You need that rest, I think, that time away from the hectic schedules and big projects. It has helped me regroup. I have a pile of post-its when ideas beside my computer right now for when I pick back up on the book. I have two and a half weeks left of my final semester. Once I get my classes’ final grades turned in, I’ll get back to the book, having taken almost three months away from it. I’ll probably take a couple of days just to sort through the ideas I have, and then I’ll get back to it. My plan is now that I’ve worked through 95% of the overall structure issues, I’ll go chapter by chapter. Probably until the end of the year, and then I’ll put it all back together in 2021. Hopefully by then, I’ll have an agent.