the quiet season
It’s Labor Day weekend, and out here that marks the end of the tourist season. Soon this little town will settle back into its sleepy rhythms, the Friday night high school football games and the storms that sweep in off the strait.
It’s been a long, busy summer and it’s not quite finished yet; I’m back in Seattle for a couple of weeks this month and then back home to visit with my parents as they swing through the area. But things have calmed down enough that I can start to work on establishing a writing pattern again. I try not to use the word habit when it comes to writing; habits are difficult for me, because it takes me a long, long time to get into a self-sustaining habit. Patterns, though, I can do for a little while, adjust, and keep going. I use Habitica, which has the lovely feature of being able to repeat certain tasks on certain days of the week. Right now, I’m aiming for an hour of writing every weekday except Friday, and a couple of hours every weekend day.
My current project is a novel called The Intercessionist, which has at its center a doctor with a very troubled past. I’m doing a lot of research for this one, reading writings by doctors and other medical professionals, trying to get into Rona’s mindset. I’m also getting a couple of short stories ready to go out on submission and working on getting a couple more complete. I’ve got a lot of plans for the quiet season. We’ll see how much of them I get done.
