Tracy Thompson's Blog: Writing and Parenting (Don't Mix) - Posts Tagged "writing"

I've just finished a book, which even I have a hard time believing; I go around the house saying, "I've finished the book" sometimes, just to get the feel of the words in my mouth--but anyway: this is the third book I've written but in some ways the first. The first two were about depression, and were written with first-hand experience very much in mind, and after them I got to a point where I had a major reaction: I did not want my life to be defined by some psychiatric condition. I cleaned out my study--gave away tons of books, stored some others, threw away tons of notes and papers, and eventually embarked on something new.

Which will be published next spring by Simon & Schuster. Entitled The New Mind of the South (and don't ask me the subtitle, I can never remember those things), it's about what it means to be a Southerner in our 21st century, supposedly post-racial era, when the South has become a mere marketing gimmick and otherwise doesn't much matter anymore. I think it does matter; I think the South is where some noble democratic ideals have met racial reality over the entire course of our nation's history, and this is still very much a work in progress. I love the South, I find it fascinating that there are still people who hold it in disdain--and yet, at the same time, I sigh and hold my head in my hands at some things that come out of it.

Be that as it may, I am now in that awkward phase: after manuscript completion, before publication. I have no idea of what to do with myself. Take up macrame? Scrapbooking? Oh, yeah--there seems to be some need to make some money, literary advances being the pitiful things that they are, so I've gotten a lead or two on that. But the reality of a freelance writer's life is that it's very much an up-and-down existence; you are either crazybusy or ready to volunteer to pick up litter along the highway, just for the sake of Something To Do. You never escape the horrible sense that the last thing you finished may indeed be the Last Thing, and that society has no further need for your endeavors--if indeed it ever did. And if you have kids, especially teen and pre-teen kids, they don't help. "Are you done with your book? When's it coming out? Why isn't it coming out sooner? How many people do you think will buy it?" Jesus H. Christ on a RAFT, do you think I know??

So today I called Beth, my longsuffering agent, and griped to her about my lack of purpose and sense of malaise, and she came up with a common-sense solution: "Think about what you want to write next." Which served to remind me: there is a huge pile of ironing upstairs.