A long winter’s nap

People keep asking me if I’ve started another novel and the truth is, I have. I have five hundred terrifying words I wrote in November and have been backing away slowly from ever since. I am bone tired, if you want to know. The last twelve months took everything I had to give. Between writing, rewriting, editing, proofing, waiting, launching, promoting, travelling, and  talking oh the talking, not to mention my full-time job, trying to keep the house from falling into the sea and maintaining my primary relationships, you know, it’s been a time. A time of not much rest. Very little staring out the window. Many many weeks of never doing what I wanted, only what I needed to do.

I have been sick three times since the launch in Halifax for Fallsy Downsies. I have travelled to Toronto and back by car twice. I have let my fitness and flexibility disappear. And now it’s February and I feel like I might be waking up. Maybe. I wouldn’t want to rush to call it that, but maybe that is what’s happening.

I am thinking about Becks, this character who thrust herself into the front of my mind in November. I have been thinking about her and thinking that eventually I will have to make and keep a date with her. And then another. And another and then before too long, she and I will be an item and it’ll be back into that dark dance.

Not yet. I am making my way through a stack of New Yorker magazines that piled up on the piano over the last several months. I am lifting weights and doing push ups and swimming and playing tennis. I am staring out the window. I am waking up.