I have felt completely out of control for the past week.

There are a lot of things going on ranging from the puppy who is now 80 pounds and totally needs some obedience training (he's a good boy but such a BIG boy) to the new business my husband and I have been working on (see the web site) (it's in addition to our long term business) which is now shifting into high gear to MAP which is laboring under an editorial letter that demands an enormous amount of attention. And I can't give it the singular attention it deserves. I can't sit for hours and hours and go over that book because my husband is out in SE Alaska talking to guys about fish and my son still needs to be homeschooled and taken to get his hair cut and to karate and to guitar and I have a doctor's appointment (dermatologist - can not be postponed) and and and so much more.

I wonder what it would be like sometimes to be a writer who gets to just write.

The businesses - the regular one and the new one - are what pay the bills. (Well, actually I pay the bills as the accounting is my job but you get the idea.) But the writing is what I've always wanted and to have this convergence where both are blowing up at exactly the same time (literally) is sort of the biggest cosmic joke ever. Seriously. One wonders just what sort of test I'm being given.

And then there's the Guys Lit Wire book fair for Ballou High School which has another week to run and is going great and I'm furiously involved in and was scheduled long before the rest of this stuff threatened to happen exactly right now too and there you go. I'm kinda sorta maybe losing my mind.

But then I followed a link from the divine Sara Ryan to an article by Lauren Cerand about social media marketing for authors of all things (because I'm also thinking about that on top of everything else....) and was pretty darn impressed not only how smart it is but how much it applied to all aspects of my life. Cerand writes:

Rather than angling for a specific kind of coverage in a specific kind of outlet, I encourage authors to see things from the perspective of sustained momentum, and to do things that will continually advance their interests, and, ultimately, their careers.

The whole article is mandatory reading for authors but this bit about "sustained momentum" really appealed to me because that is what I need at this moment. I just need to keep moving forward. There is a mountain of paperwork for both Moro Aircraft and Alaska's Best Catch, there is a ton of stuff to do in this house, my son needs to get his schoolwork done everyday, the dogs need to run and I must - I MUST - get through these editorial notes.

I'm not going to get a room of my own anytime soon even though I want one desperately. So I'll have to settle for sustained momentum. Just keep moving forward and I'll get where I need to be going.

Seriously. Deep breath and head down and just keep moving.

This is also how every book on that wish list will get bought too. Sustained momentum will see me through all of it, everything, the whole long crazy chaos that looms over the coming days and weeks and months. The big picture will see me through as long as I don't lose sight of it in the midst of daily pressures. The trick is to remember that at every moment in the middle (some of those chapter notes are truly intimidating). That's my struggle right now because I really didn't want to rewrites to be done in this sort of environment.

I wanted that room, all to myself, with peace and quiet and writing. If I'm honest I'll tell you I'm pretty darn angry that I can't have it but acknowledging that won't make things change. This is just how it is this week, and will be the week after and the week after that. All I can do is keep the momentum going, on the book, on the wish list, and in my day. It's all I can do and for now it has to be enough.

Big picture; that's all I'm looking at, promise.