Settling The Dust

My poor house is strewn from one end to the other with dust and dirt, none of which was my doing. I'm laying the blame entirely on the state of Ohio and Mother Nature. The land in my part of Ohio is mostly clay, and when you pour ten more inches of water on clay than it's able to take, you get a flood.

So, for the past week I've had jackhammers going from 9 to 5. The men who did the very filthy job of putting in the French drain and sump pump did a great job, and the dust is beginning to settle.

I'll let the dust continue to settle over the weekend before I begin trying to sop it all up and make my house show-worthy again. Instead of cleaning, I'm using the weekend to work on a couple of writing projects. Settling the dust of another kind.

First, there's my ghostwriting job. I turned in the first 1000 words, and have to get to work on the next 10,000. It's in outline form and shouldn't be too hard to write, but I need time to do it. Then, there's the edits for my next contemporary. I waded through what has been edited today, and will wend my way through the last 1/3 of the book, trying to catch the things that drive this editor crazy before I send them back. Finally, there's my next historical, 2/3 of which got tossed overboard when the plot wasn't working. It's working now, just fine, but I need to think about how the next scene will play out. Letting the dust settle on that story line for a day or so.

And if I reach a point during the weekend when my three projects are at the point where I need to think about them, I'll pick up my dust mop and clear a path through the house. Already, the front door and book shelf in the living room are looking better. If I can get the floor clean by Monday, I'll consider it a good weekend, dust and all.