Tempus Fugit

 Time passes so quickly that it alarms me sometimes. How did I get anything done at all in my real life when I worked for other people? The truth is that I didn't, or at least I was only able to do whatever was absolutely necessary to live.

Now my work is writing, and work at it I do, and yet it still feels to me that I'm always short of time. Days bleed into one another, and weeks, and months, and a year passes without my quite being aware of how it happened. It seems that I'm constantly busy, and yet I feel like I make little progress.

Yet when I remember the monumental events in my past that changed my life forever, or set me on a new path, I realize that most of them happened quickly, sometimes in an instant. I think of that when I'm frustrated, when it comes to me that I have less and less time in front of me to fool around with and wonder if it's just going to be like this for the rest of my life.

In the words of that immortal philosopher, Yogi Berra, "it ain't over till it's over."

With that in mind, I keep plugging along on the new book, and I finally see an end to the first draft, at least. I need a few more good weeks of writing. The end of this month is shaping up to be very busy, so I'm working hard to get as much done as I can before things get crazy. 

As for the new book, it's interesting to see how it's shaping up. I may have mentioned before that no matter what you plan to write, things show up in books that never occurred to you when you started out. This book is the beginning of what I hope is an entirely new series, a contemporary mystery with a story element set in the 1990s. My protagonist, a young Dutchwoman names Miep, is dealing with a lot of demons that I didn't realize were there until I started writing her.  Funny. You dig deep for your characters, and bring up a lot of stuff that was way down inside yourself.

P.S. I have no title for the new book yet. If anybody has any great ideas, I'm all ears.