The Writer Goes to Iceland

Ninety minutes of sleep in 36 hours, a five-hour time change, totally different currency, and a language I don’t speak. What could possibly go wrong?

If this were 2023, the answer would be: everything. Everything could, and would, go wrong. Luckily, it’s 2024, I have a brand new chance to make nice with the universe, and the worst that happened was getting slightly cursed by the Icelandic mountain gods for pocketing a few sea-smoothed lava rocks…

The trip happened smack in the middle of Book 2 edits. It couldn’t be helped. Illness, unexpected work, family almost-emergencies, a vet appointment I forgot about. I’ve been pushing things to the next day or week and I’m running behind on these edits. I’m trying to look at the bright side, which is that the story has more time to cure before I really dive into it one more time.

It was also good to take a complete pause on the work. No wi-fi, no laptop, no iPad, and no time to read or write anything anyway, with the action-packed five days we planned. I was always present, living in the moment and appreciating it in a way that would be more difficult if I knew I could be getting work done instead.

Now that I’ve returned to Ohio, (mostly) unpacked, showered, and organized, it’s back to the grindstone. For a few weeks, anyway. I’m still querying Book 1 and have a few dozen pending responses. I should finish Book 2 edits this month, and barring further illness, unexpected work, family almost-emergencies, and vet appointments I forgot about, I hope to start edits on the two poetry books I’ll be publishing this summer. Next month will be more poetry and starting Big Revisions on Book 3.

It's gonna be a long month, a long couple of months, a long first half of the year. But at least I have these Iceland memories to hold me through until the next time I can escape it all.