Working Holiday

Spring in the pagan days was the beginning of a new year. Same applies to the workplace fiscal year, which starts on April Fool’s Day and don’t let the irony of that escape you. Perhaps because April begins the first annual quarter at work, it heralds a beginning for me. By the end of March, my creativity has been suppressed for almost three months and I’m dyin’. Fortunately (is it?), I have accumulated enough years of service to enable a full five day week of vacation without making a big dent in my annual allocation.

I’m taking such a break next week. I like to have a project in mind before I book vacation, usually something I can finish, like a short story that’s been in progress for months or something new, like The King’s Man, which was written on the fly over four days straight. This time out, I’m admitting defeat before I begin. I will not get this holiday’s project done before I have to go back to work … but I intend on getting my teeth into it nonetheless.

It’s the novel, also known as Reijo’s romance. Having committed to finishing the first draft before tackling something newer and shinier, I’ve been tapping away at it of late and have discovered some wondrous things about my mysterious heroine. I knew very little of her when I started. Four years later, she was still baffling. It’s true what they say – creativity feeds on itself. Only by focusing intently on Jannika’s part of the story have I discovered who she truly is. A general idea has evolved into a complex but very real young woman who is struggling to understand …

No spoilers allowed, especially as the series preceding this volume remains unpublished. Learning what I’ve learned about Nika, however, has given my writing holiday a greater purpose than simply not going to work. Now I have something to accomplish and I’m excited about it. Yup, rewriting a bunch of already written stuff has never looked so inviting. So, first thing on Monday morning, I’ll be camped at the Moka House with an Asian Mist and my scribbly journal, making helter-skelter notes to help with my mission of tightening up weaker scenes and revisiting the ones that work to ensure continuity. Once I’ve cleaned up the preliminaries, I should be able to write nonstop to a happy ending.

Me, write a happy ending? Hey, everything is possible.