Wake Up Call

I'm not a morning person. Never have been. My dad still laughs when he remembers how I hated to get up for school. Oh, I liked school. I just didn't like getting up.

I've never worked a regular job, at least not after I got married. I worked at home or from home, so no drastically early hours. Of course, then there were babies. I got up for them. As they grew up, we homeschooled to the beat of mom's biorhythms. And they weren't early ones.



The kids are all off on their own now, and I'm working from home again, setting my own hours and managing my time well enough to get everything done. Until recently, that is. In the last three months I've had deadlines on three manuscripts, one for an agent who requested a full manuscript, one for an editor who wants to see a full manuscript and one work-for-hire contract. In the middle of all this, I landed another contract for a book that's going to require a lot of research and a lot of words. Suddenly, there isn't enough time in the day. There aren't enough days in the week, or the month, for that matter!

So I'm back to getting up with the babies. Only now the babies are books. Sometimes they wake me up in the middle of the night and need tending or changing. They aren't screaming for food at six o'clock in the morning, but I'm setting the clock like they were. I finished a whole chapter this week. I felt like a proud parent. And I'm ready for sleep when the sun goes down.