Lynn H. Blackburn

image courtesy of photobucket.com

My blog has been fairly serious over the past few weeks.

My life has, too.

But I can’t be serious all the time and as my month long revision process winds down, I’ve been thinking of all the things I’ve given up in order to focus so totally on my manuscript.

Here are a few, in no particular order.

Watching TV. I don’t watch a lot of shows, but most of the ones I do watch have been on hiatus for the summer. And all had season premieres in the past week. I did not watch. I sat downstairs and typed away while my husband watched all of them, laughing so hard I could hear him through two closed doors.

(Exception – NCIS. I’m a girl with priorities. Plus, I write romantic suspense. I consider it “research” and watch guilt-free.)

Doing laundry. Not really much of a sacrifice. I’ll pay for it later, but for now . . .

Reading. This one is a sacrifice. I haven’t read any fiction in a month. That might be a record for me. The reason is simple self-preservation. As soon as I pick up Steven James’ The Bishop, I’m toast. It will be a planned “mommy outage” – nothing will get done. Possibly even less than is getting done now. When this revision is over, I’m going to curl up with that book and read it, probably within 48-hours. I’ll then spend the next several weeks jumping at the slightest sound in the middle of the night. But it will be worth it.

Knitting. I love to knit. It’s relaxing. Except for when you drop a stitch and have to spend several hours trying to salvage the week’s worth of work you’ve done. I realize it doesn’t sound all that appealing, but it is. At this point, I’d be happy to knit a dishcloth. But I won’t. I won’t. Not until I’m done.

Eating. Um. No. Not really. Which is a shame.

Tweeting. I haven’t gotten into Twitter yet, but I’ve been convinced I need to give it a go. But not yet.

Sleeping. In the past week, I’ve dreamed that James Scott Bell left a message on my Facebook wall telling me I hadn’t put enough tension in my plot. (No. We’ve never met.) Two nights later, as I struggled to come up with the perfect “climactic” scene, I dreamed one. It was horrible. And off-beat. And as my characters raced away from the scene of the carnage, there was none other than Steven James himself (who I have met), herding two small goats away from the flames. Side note: there are NO goats in my story.

When this is over, I’m thinking about sending my kids to my parents for the weekend. (They don’t know this . . . well, I guess they do now).

I’ll be sleeping late, tweeting in my pajamas, napping, reading The Bishop, watching all the shows stored on my DVR and knitting a dishcloth. Or maybe a baby sweater.

The laundry can wait.

I’m a girl with priorities.