As most of you reading know, I’m feeling under some (self-induced) pressure to wrap the first draft of Sunspin. I’d intended to be done by 8/31, but lost more time that I’d planned to both Worldcon and chemotherapy. Still, I’m five days or less from being done. And I have another deadline looming, 9/30, to casacorona for Kalimpura.

So yesterday I didn’t write. Which is always weird.

But life has priorities. the_child needed to talk over some pretty serious stuff. Then the two of us needed to do some light-hearted stuff to wind down from the serious stuff. Plus I wanted to make some salsa, which I could do with my head and my heart in a jumble. (Unlike, say, writing more of Sunspin just then.) Plus I’d slept crappy the night before, so by the time I’d found my way back into my usual level head, my usual level head was stuffed with cotton candy and not suitable for fiction production.

So parenting was a priority. And rightly, absolutely so. But still, there’s a bit of a risk in getting so focused on process (or in this case, deadline) that the rest of life can slip away. I’m quite capable of hyperfocusing on writing fiction, I’ve done it many times.

Sometimes it’s good to remember why I’m really here. Even when my inner project manager is pitching a fit and throwing mental Post-It notes out the metaphorical window.

Originally published at jlake.com. You can comment here or there.