Multi-tasking. I don’t like it. I like work in progress over works in progress. But a creative person like myself can’t help it. I’m querying one manuscript while writing my next while working on a picture book while blogging while doing the tasks for day to day life. It can be maddening. I like to knock things out. In neat rows, one by one. Stand back and take in the accomplishment completed with focus, and pride felt, move on from there.
That’s not the way of things. Not at all. One thing is done, my manuscript for the first in a series, but I still have to find it an agent, publisher and get it on bookshelves. So its query, query, query, and work on book two in the meanwhile. Then, there the bugaboo of new inspirations and ideas. I know I will die before I complete all my ideas. I will fade into the deep chasm of time and be lost and my ideas with me.
It makes me miss my insomniac days where I could count on my hands the hours of sleep for a week. I had so much time to work. Twenty hour days give you so much time. Time to play, work and still accomplish things. If only I had succumbed to the call of the writer in those days. But as it is, I need to budget time. I need to carefully monitor what I do and how I spend it. I know the orphaned children of my mind need me to bring them crying into this twisted world.
So, as I work toward my goals, I’m tormented by the knowledge I will never complete all I want. Works in progress, it engenders a yoke across my shoulders in a field without end, but it keeps me moving toward the horizon. I will keep working, hoping someday to have run out of ideas that beckon me to pen them. Until then, I will always be a work in progress with works in progress.