8 August 2004

This day off thing. I don't know. It's easy enough when, for example, you have a big picnic planned. Or when you're newly sick and the book is being difficult. But when the book has turned a corner and you've been sick all week and are really tired of it...it gets much harder to take a day off, because there you've been all week, lying around useless and all. (Useless and still writing. But never mind that bit.)

But the point of taking a day off from work every week is not that there's something else going on. It's that sometimes the brain needs to recharge, reset, spend time on other things. Sometimes it is not time to be writing, or thinking about writing, or feeling I should be writing. Taking time off from writing -- like writing itself -- is not just around for when it's easy to do.

So. I started Ian MacLeod's The Light Ages yesterday, and I'm enjoying it a lot. Really industrial-type industrial fantasy. It's the last book on my library pile, so I'll probably get all of those back to the library tomorrow when I (drum roll please) leave the house.

I took a nap this morning. A nap. For an hour.

...and then I wandered off and talked to my folks and finished the MacLeod, and now I'm reading Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver, because I'm getting better now, sort of, and can risk being crushed by its massiveness.