When your youngest child is heading off to college, there is a term for it — the empty nest syndrome. My wife, Mary Ann, is an organized person, and she had been planning for it. For this first year on our own again, we have a travel schedule that looks overwhelming.
We just returned from Europe. This was a last family vacation, and for five weeks Mary Ann and Debra have driven around France and the UK. I was there for three of those weeks, and while I collected a lot of information and have a number of new ideas for stories, I wrote very few words. This full time writer profession is as hard to keep under control as holding an angry snake by the tail.
Back home, I have better luck getting back into the plot. I just hope I can keep it up. In the next month, I will be at three different cons, and will travel thousands of miles. But this time it will be in my RV, complete with internet connections via satellite. I have hopes. Since we purchased it, I have moved my “writing place” to this home on wheels. As I type, it is parked in our back yard, where I can watch the squirrel raiding the pecan tree just three feet away. Yesterday we spent the night at Granger Lake as a trial run.
It looks good. With a reasonable travel pace, this is an office where I can work, and with any luck, maybe I can turn those European ideas into something people can read.