The Last Box

This is really hard. But today, I’m going to send back the last box.

I’ve been getting my book in its various stages from my publisher over the past several months. And I get to open the box and peruse it and nit pick, and wonder if it’s too late to crawl under a rock, and shed tears of joy and terror and wonder who am I and why on earth am I here and what is my purpose and whatever it is I’m not sure it was to write a book and so on and so on until I’ve worked myself into a ball and all that can unravel me is a plate of chicken wings.

This is my zen tea place that I go to write on occasion. But I write from strange places sometimes. I find that a change of scene every few days helps. I also find that I can now write from moving vehicles, seeing as I just wrote 12 pages in the passenger seat of a car this past weekend. And airplanes. I get a lot done there. So I’m becoming versatile in this roller coaster writer’s life I’ve been living. I haven’t always been so flexible… I’m a bit type-A and it means that I like to have the reigns in hand so I know where this horse and buggy is headed.

But basically, by sending in the last box, I’m handing over the reigns. No more changes. No more tweaks. No more nits. No more picks. The UPS man may have to tug it out of my hands. But I’ll probably let go. Probably. He may have to bribe me with a chicken wing.

The other nice distraction is that for whatever reason, whenever I hit a milestone in my book writing journey, I end up going on a fun outdoors adventure.

And it so happens, that this weekend, I’m heading to the outskirts of Portland to fish for Chinook. Cooking is always the best therapy. It really is. So are fish guts. But they don’t smell as nice.

So goodbye manuscript, hello Chinook.

I’ll be sure to share all the delicious details next week! Happy Friday!