Calling a Timeout

On Team Skelley, Jen is the project manager. That means she’s the cheerleader, or the taskmaster, depending on your point of view. She’s the one who sets deadlines and holds our feet to the fire. Except that last week she started not doing that. And if Kent tried to step in and direct us toward the Writing Cave, she’d find excuses not to go. (And when those excuses are ice cream sandwiches, it’s hard for Kent to argue with her logic.)

Turns out that editing multiple large manuscripts back-to-back can get a bit wearisome, and Jen was ready for a break. It took Kent by surprise, because Jen is almost never ready for a break. But here she was, actually suggesting that we set the current project aside for a couple weeks and work on something else (and yet also somehow make the deadline she pulled out of her butt for editing this plus the third Science Novel, and had neglected to tell Kent about). Clearly something was up.

We wrote the second and third Science Novels back-to-back, and by the end it was like a death march. We vowed never to do that again. Yet somehow we thought that editing three novels in a row would go smoothly.

We are very smart people, honest.

So we took four days off (in a row!) and let our brains unwind a bit. Kent proposed that we spend some time in the Cave on Sunday and see how it went, and it went well. Since then we’ve been back at it. A mini-break might be all that was called for. That surprise deadline might be reachable after all.

A writing partner is someone who helps you keep your sanity. And feeds you ice cream sandwiches.