When you live in the UK, anywhere where the sun shines is good vacation material, especially at this time of the year, while we're waiting patiently (or not so patiently) for 'summer' to arrive. Brittany, which is where we've been for the past few days, in the north-west of France, is sunny and green this week. Lovely wine-drinking and cheese-munching weather. You all envious? Excellent. I'll stop now.
The down side? Vacations can be difficult for writers. It's the only time I ever wish I had a 'normal' job. It's great to be your own boss, keep your own hours, choose your own projects. But it also means that when you're away, the work crashes to a halt. There's no office to leave behind that will go on nicely without me. If I'm not there, nothing gets done.
And it's amazing how reliant we are on having the internet at our fingertips 24/7. This post, for instance, is popping up late today, simply because I'm sitting on the train without mobile internet.
Tonight, I get home, and I've gotta say: I'm not looking forward to spending the entire day tomorrow catching up on vast mounds of email, trying to remember where I'm up to in my WIP and wondering if I'd have been better off with the 15,000 words I could have written if I'd stayed home.
Still, poor me, right? Can't complain. Not everyone gets to leave the dreary UK weather behind and swan around in France for a week in spring, eating lovely food, seeing the sights of Paris and then off into the wilderness to breathe sweet country air. So I'll just keep on taking vacations. Even if it means a bit of work doesn't get done.
4 comments:
Although returning to a mound of catch-up work is not fun, I find vacations give me plenty of fodder for future stories. Plus, i get to slow down and relax a bit, which is a real treat.
Your time in Brittany sounds delightful. I'm properly jealous!
Hi Erica,
Sounds like a hard life these holidays, but someone has to do it.
Cheers
Margaret
Lol, Margaret - I like mini-vacations or a long weekend so I'm not so far behind. I'd rather not take my laptop with me in case there is internet because then I'm not on "vacation", I'm working and that downtime is a great place to rejuvenate, refresh, and just plain rest and relax.
Having just returned from sunny Tempe/Phoenix, Arizona and now have dreary grey weather, I can sympathize with the need to get away into the sunshine!
Hope you're caught up on emails and forging on with your WIP.
Erica, totally agree on how hard it is to come back to the backlog. And I dislike being away from technology and being able to write, though I'll confess it does me a power of good to have a break - even if my husband has to drag me away from my computer kicking and screaming! Luckily my smartphone gives me decent access to email so I can do the odd bit of staying on top of it. And last year I managed to sneakily write a whole 17K novella on my phone. :P
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