When I Finish My Book I’m Going To…

Hi. Barb here.

Yesterday, I sent the manuscript of Musseled Out, the third Maine Clambake Mystery, to my editor.

Prior to that, I spent close to three months in Book Jail. Book jail is the place bad writers go when they have

not managed their time well
overcommitted, or
their current project is a beast that will not be wrestled to the ground.

So while I have been in book jail, I have been paying no attention to any other aspect of my life. But I have occasionally noticed my surroundings and daydreamed about what I’ll do when I get out. Weirdly, it’s not exciting travel or entertainment I’m dreaming of. It’s little things like–

1) Clean my desk.

This is where I work when I’m in Boothbay. While I’m not one to keep a pin-neat desk, it doesn’t normally look like this. Cleaning and arranging my desk makes me feel in control of my project (especially when I’m not). But there was no time for desk cleaning in the final throes of this project. (By the way, that bench gets really, really hard in the eleventh or twelfth hour of the day.)

2) Speaking of cleaning desktops—

This one, too.

 

 

3) Rebuild my Pandora station. For some reason, I’m sharing my Pandora station, so I can’t update my list of artists, so I have to rebuild it from scratch, etc, etc. I don’t find the Pandora interface to be particularly intuitive, so I knew this will take awhile–thus it had to wait until after book jail.

4) Unsubscribe from like a million email lists and e-retailers. I go through period purges of my most faithful e-mail correspondents and since I can’t find my real e-mail for all the junk, it’s time for another. I should do the same thing with my paper catalogs, too, but hey, let’s not go crazy.

5) Switch my clothes. I still have my winter clothes out. Fortunately, the weather has been so cooperative that I haven’t noticed until the last few days. But now it’s time. Summer clothes out, winter clothes away, extras to charity.

So that’s my list.

Readers, what do you long to do when you finish a project?