April passed in a haze of deadlines. A feature for Quill and Quire, plus a short assignment for their website, and two podcast pieces for TGIM. Plus my usual work at Propriometrics and a trip to a publishing conference in Salt Lake City, and of course, the arduous task of figuring out what the hell is going on with Good Birds Don’t Fly Away.

I’m glad to have had a flurry of deadlines, as April deadlines bring May cheques. That’s how that line goes, right? At the moment I have no deadlines, which means June might be a bit lean. So I am for the first time facing the complicated bliss of a couple days off with the accompanying knowledge that days off equal days with no pay and too many of those equal bad times. But I have a few ideas idling, ready to go out into the world and see if they can find a home, and the pause in activity is certainly welcome. Shit got kinda crazy for a bit there in April.

And May is a classically hard month for my family. I’ll be seeing them next week and there’s a certain amount of relief that goes along with that, but also some dread. It’s been years since I’ve seen them in May, and so I’ve been able to just contend with my own sadness up close, while having at least some intellectual distance between me and their sadness. But this year, our sadnesses will be all up in each others’ grills, which is both good and bad. Sixteen years in, you’d think I’d be more articulate about this, but nope!

What did stay steady, even through April’s full-on assault on my calendar, was my writing practise. It’s still a weekly event, rather than daily, but I am showing up to my desk at the library every Wednesday (or the odd Tuesday or Thursday as dictated by the schedules of my co-writers, Emily Pohl-Weary and Michelle Elrick) and cramming out at least a thousand words, often more. I do not feel closer to knowing what is happening in my novel, but every thousand words written takes me toward knowing, so I am trying to trust the process and not be so committed to outcome. Outcome comes later. It’s an awkward mantra, but hey, you work with what you have.

Other things I’ve been working with lately: Tiny, Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed, learning to sew at Patch in Halifax, and of course, Lemonade, on repeat, all day and all night.

How about you? What are you working with?