So, where was I?

You might have been wondering where I've been. I'm afraid I need to tell you that the real world dragged me off in a big way a little over a week ago. I went a full 9 days without working on the book.

So how did it happen? It just did. At some point, you need to leave your book project, no matter how pressing the deadline, and attend to other commitments. That's what I needed to do. First, I taught a 2-hour webinar and needed about 60 new slides. I had to wade my way through the new American Academy of Pediatric's policy statement, and follow-up technical report, on safe infant sleep. There had been more changes than I initially thought. So that was 3 days right there.

The second issue needing my attention was the next issue of Clinical Lactation. I had to get it shipped off to the publisher. It generally takes me a full week to finish thoroughly editing it and getting it out the door. So......that pretty much accounted for the rest of the time.

The good news is that I am now back on task. I've been able to start copyediting and have edited 6 chapters so far. They were in surprisingly good shape (I'm pleased to report.) I know that it will be different when I hit the chapters that are brand new for this book (for they are "true" first drafts). Those chapters will take some work, I'm sure. But for now, I'm happy to making progress again.

I think what the last couple of weeks illustrates is that no matter how much we want to check out from the real world while working on a book, at some point, the real world finds us--and we need to respond. The trick is to get right back to it when your other obligations have been met. And that can be the tricky part for a lot of authors; once they lose that momentum, it's hard to get it back.

But if we want to be productive writers, we really must learn to work through these times and work even we have lost momentum. It can be done! Just don't wait too long.

And speaking of the task at hand, I'd better get back to it. Happy writing!