Spring cleaning my life

This has been rather a strange week, filled with both creative success and sadness/frustration.

On the happy side, I finished Aardvark on Thursday. Now, it's only 32,000 words, which is nowhere close to being a novel, but it covers the essentials of what I wanted to say and I am pleased with that. I'm going to let it rest for a few weeks and then decide what, if anything, to do with it.

I've been trying to convince myself to start the next book's planning on Monday, but I just feel so gray these days. Do you get that feeling? Nothing's wrong but nothing feels hugely right either.

I did some free writing this morning to try to get at the source of the dull feeling that's lying over me, and I think it's coming 90% from doing the same old things over and over and 10% from obsessing over things I can't change and can't do anything about.

I'm bad with the "same old same old". I often won't even watch a new movie (even at home for free) because I haven't seen it before. Well, DUH, that's the point of watching a new movie. I know, but I just get these blocks about not enjoying it and then I don't watch. Same with books, although I am doing much better there since I switched almost exclusively to eBooks on my Palm.

So this week, I will spring clean the house AND spring clean my mind and creativity by doing something new every day. A movie I haven't watched before, a new author, coffee at a place I've never been (yes, I am one of those tedious people who doesn't like to try new restaurants :)... every single day! And I will blog about it.

That should at least help with the 90% part. It's so hard to get out of a rut, I find, but to be able to write with excitement and joy I need to be living those things, right?

Which takes me to the 10%. I love writing. At the moment, I don't love the industry side of it too much. I'm worrying far too much about things I can't control and obsessing over hidden meaning in rejection letters and all that sort of foolishness.

Therefore, I've gone through my blog roll and made some serious cuts. I will now read only one agent blog (Janet Reid's, because I find her both hilarious and informative) instead of the vast collection I had before, and I'm simply not going to worry about Raoul as it goes through the submission process. I have my procedures in place to send out queries as they're needed, and that's all I need to do.

I have an affirmation that I got from Carolyn See's "Making a Literary Life" (fantastic book, by the way): "Everything always works out for me, more exquisitely than I ever planned." I do believe that I'm meant to be writing, and I further believe I'm meant to be published eventually. The timing of it is not up to me. What is up to me is how hard I work and how much life I bring to my writing.

Next week my "work" is getting the life back in my life. The following week we can worry about the writing. :)

Spring is (finally!) coming. What are you going to do this week to enjoy it?