I’m in the middle of rewriting a nonfiction book for republication. I’d been working on it for a couple of weeks when I was interupted by my son’s wedding. A weekend affair ended up taking two weeks out of my writing life. Today I’m trying to pick up the pieces and I feel very much like the proverbial woman who spread a pillow case full of feathers around the countryside. So many ideas and thoughts and half-formed suggestions have to be picked back up and put into my brain. I have to juggle what the editor said in his rewrite letter, what I want to do to make the book better than it was orginally, the new research I’ve done, and a list of things I have to cut, add, and rewrite. I have to remember to delete the footnotes, add the questions at the end of the chapters, and not tell the same story twice.

It seems impossible, like picking up those feathers. I put it off all morning and finally began after lunch. A tentative start, but a start nontheless.

Will I make the deadline? Right now it seems unlikely.