…is that I cannot write long works of fiction during the summer.
It’s taken me a couple of years to figure this out, simply because it never occurred to me that my writing habits might be dependent on the seasons, but it’s become very evident that when it’s cold outside – specifically, when it’s cold in the evenings and mornings – I can crank out the words by the thousands. But when the weather becomes warmer, my body just kind of falls apart. I can’t concentrate. It’s simply too hot. I can manage short stories, and maybe novelettes, but that’s it. Also, I skip days. Lots and lots of days go by without writing, during the hotter months. I read a lot – and most of it is crap. I play video games. My mind wanders in some kind of heat-induced fugue. I go to bed at 9pm sometimes (if it reaches the 90′s in my apartment – like tonight – I fall apart closer to eight). I get up at four or five, completely exhausted. I’m miserable.
So, yeah. From late fall to early spring, that’s novel-writing time. From late spring to early fall, that’s short story and reading time. Now that my mind has caught up with what my Alaskan-born, Pacific Northwest-bred body has known for years, I can work around this. And hopefully this new self-awareness will not only make me more productive in the long run, but allow me to ease up on the incredible and often unattainable writing quotas I sometimes hold myself to. Really, I need to give myself a fucking break.
In other news, I haven’t said anything about this, because I’m not sure of the etiquette regarding introductions, but during Readercon, one of my favorite authors asked if he could write the intro to my Lethe Press collection. Actually, it was more like he told me he was going to write it, and my head bobbed up and down like one of those plastic birds that dip their heads into water glasses. Using words like “thrilled” or “honored” seem almost like an insult. The only way this could be topped is if Shirley Jackson or Lovecraft wrote the intro. Well, you’ll all find out next year.
Also: I might have found a cover. More on that later. Now I need to pry the contacts from my eyes and fall into my nightly summer fever dream.