Writing is my oxygen | Peggy Jaeger, Author

Tag Archives: Writing is my oxygen

August 1, 2018 · 4:00 am

A different track?

It’s been a little over a week since I got home from the RWA 2018 conference. Last week I basically played catch-up with my life. Laundry needed to get done, groceries needed to be shopped for, I had to pay a passel of bills, clean my house, visit and check on my mother, the car was scheduled for an oil change and tune-up, I had a repeat mammogram, a weeks’ worth of blogs to write, PLUS I had a deadline for edits due yesterday on a second holiday release, and my final audio chapters had to be listened to and corrected before the book goes to Audible.

Oh, and let’s not forget I needed to reconnect with my husband and daughter.

Can you spell S-T-R-E-S-S-E-D?

So, because I’m only one woman and even I – Miss Chronic Insomnia – sleep 2 hours a night, I am doing something I’ve never done before with regard to my writing.

Get ready for it, because it’s a doozy!

I, Mrs Writing is my Oxygen, am taking a bit of a writing break.

I know. Shocked the s**t out of me, too!

I’ve never actually had a vacation from writing before, even when I worked full time. I always wrote in the evenings, on weekends, and when we traveled.

But I’m going to give myself 2 weeks off starting in a few days. I need to rest my brain and re-examine my career. This has been a busy year, writing and publishing-wise for me. I had one book come out in April ( CAN’T STAND THE HEAT), and I have at least 2 books ( DEARLY BELOVED and CHRISTMAS & CANOLLIS) and an e-book (HOPE’S DREAM) coming out before the end of the year, plus 2 Audible books.

That’s a lot.

Really. A lot.

So….let’s see if I survive this little vaca from writing everyday. I just might not be able to….breathe, and by breathe, I mean make it out on the other end alive!

Hahah. Dramatic, thy name is Peg Jaeger.

Any hoo. I’ll report back after my self imposed exile ends. Until then, I’ll be scheduling some stuff on Hootsuite I’m writing a head of time, so you’ll still hear from me regularly.

When I’m off the grid – and even when I’m on it – you can find me here:

Tweet Me//Read Me// Visit Me//Picture Me//Pin Me//Friend Me//Google+Me// Triber// Book Me

4 Comments

Filed under #RWA2018

Tagged as #amwriting #amblogging #amlearning, #Ilovebooks, #WritingLife #WritersLife, Hootsuite, Summer vacation, Writers on writing #WritersonWriting, Writing is my oxygen

August 16, 2015 · 11:44 am

Reflections on August…

I’ve been writing daily, non-stop, since January of this year. My word tracker tells me I’ve logged in over 2,000,000 words. I don’t know if that’s a lot, average for a writer, or below the norm. I do know that writing makes me happy, whether it’s my blog, my wip,or a short story I’m working on. I once heard Nora Roberts liken writing to exercising. She said, if you don’t do it for a few days, like a muscle, it begins to atrophy. The “it” is the writing or the work of writing. And I agree.

But…

I decided to take a little break this month after I came back from RWA in NYC in July. I have a life outside of writing – I know, who’d have thought? – and I have several art, craft, and culinary projects that are time consuming I wanted to get started and done. The first weekend in the month I ripped apart every closet in my house, culled, restructured, tossed, donated and generally made all my closets look like new again. It took me three days, 8 hours a day. By day three I had great closets and writing withdrawal. While I’d been culling,etc, several ideas had shot into my head and I needed to write them down, but I’d vowed to have a stay-cation from writing so…

Yeah. If you’re a writer you know where this is going.

Day 4 broke and I wanted to start on a new, large decoupage trunk project I was going to do for a friend’s birthday present. Since her b’day is in September and this was August, I needed to get a move on. 2 hours into the project my hands started shaking because my writing-dormant brain had just solved a plot point problem I’d been having with my WIP. What to do? My non-writing vow slapped me hard in the face and…I slapped back. Yup. I broke my vow. For the next six hours I was able to rewrite a scene that had been driving me nutso for weeks. And it came out pretty damn good if I do say so. And right after that I wrote down all those ideas I’d come up with during closet cleaning. In fact, I sat at my laptop for a total of 10 hours that day -with one or two needed bathroom breaks – and got everything down that had been begging to be let out from my brain. The writing withdrawal symptoms ground me down. Like a meth addict, I was unable to control my “need” but in my case it was a need to write, not do drugs. Just clarifying, folks.

So.

Today is August 16. My word tracker tells me I have written 57,000 words during the past 10 days. That’s 5 blogs, and the rest split up between several WIP’s currently in production. I’ll have to include the 500 or so from this blog as well. Like moths drawn to flames, mosquitos pulled to bug zappers, use whatever metaphor or alliteration you want, I HAD to write. No, I HAVE to write. It is, in its purest definition, who and what I am.

There’s a reason this website is called WRITING IS MY OXYGEN. You can’t life without breathing…and I can’t live without writing.