Saturday at Last!
Mood:  celebratory
Topic: Daily Eruptions
The first week back to work after vacation is hard, and this week was even harder because Sudie freaked out while I was gone and decided to rewrite all of the rules. The first part of the week was horrible. Enough that I decided it was time to stop thinking of this as My Work, and start thinking of it as a J-O-B. I really don't want to think of it that way, because it is really hard for me to stay motivated to stay in any typical "job" for very long. If I feel like I'm Sudie's collaborator, rather than just her employee, I think I'll feel motivated longer. Things eased up a little by the end of the week, but they're still more tense than I like. I'm hoping that when the new studio is finished and she can actually start working on her art again, and we can work in separate physical spaces, life will get easier.

As much as I am relieved that it's Saturday because it means I don't have to be at her house, I still have to do work today. I have brochures for the upcoming Open Studio Tour to drop off in stores around Durham, and then two stores I have to go to in Raleigh, and then take down her artwork at Artspace. It will take me most of the day. So it's going to be a very short weekend before I have to start in again....

But I'm going camping next weekend, which makes me really happy. I haven't been camping since I did my solo tour of the Upper Peninsula over a year ago. Hans isn't sure he wants to go, but I think I'm going to take Kaija and see how she does with sleeping in a tent.

When I get home tonight I have to get busy writing. I am behind on my assignments for my nonfiction class, in large part due to vacation. I have "finished" one long essay (it's more than 2,000 words and the assignment was 1,000--which might make it difficult to find a publisher) that the class's facilitator, Christina, thinks is ready to go out into the world. I also wrote the rough draft of a how-to article--which is a brand new format for me--longhand in a notebook before I left for vacation and now I can't seem to find the notebook. I need to find it and type it up, add on the into that I wrote while I couldn't sleep one night this week, find a few statistics to drop in, and get that turned in. I also need to conduct a twenty-minute interview with someone I might like to profile for a third piece. I have never done an interview article, either, so this will be a good exercise for me. And, then, for this week's assignment, I have to research markets and determine where I'm going to send one of my finished pieces. Since the essay is the only thing finished right now, I'm going to focus on marketing that, but I really want to finish the how-to piece. It's amazing to realize that I actually know enough about something to be able to give advice on it to others. The great thing about the piece is that it's also an evergreen, which means that each year I can resell the article because the topic won't go out of popularity.

It has been wonderful to have someone to read and comment on my work and to give the class guidance on working and publishing in the nonfiction world. I took nonfiction writing with Shana Alexander at USC, but my brain wasn't in the right place. At twenty-five, I really hadn't found the maturity as a writer or the confidence to feel comfortable with the genre. I was too timid and too limited in my thinking about what I could do. So this class, which is only six weeks long, has done exactly what I needed it to in that it has jumpstarted my writing and it has given me the confidence to continue on. I am definitely going to miss having a mentor, though. I'm thinking of asking Christina if she ever does one-on-one coaching for specific projects and what her rates would be. In particular, it would be helpful to have her coach me through the transition into feature writing, which is where I ultimately want to work, I think.

Okay, now to work....