Ahhhh, work is sucking me in!

**MomToTwoBoys** · 12-16-2008, 11:47 PM

We're heading out on vacation this coming Saturday for seven days of inlaws fun! We always have Christmas at their place (except the first year we moved in here and the first year we came to Calgary, so four out of the last six years has been holidays out of town).

I've also been working on a book over the last few weeks and am in the midst of finishing the first draft. I have eight chapters so far and the ninth is in the works. The trouble is that I have no energy to work on that last chapter before I go to Edmonton. I had asked DH about laptops and told him I wish I could take my work with me, even pointing out that Dell sold Mini 9 laptops for $349. The whole point of it was to have something to take with me so that I could do some work while we're gone.

I wouldn't be working when we're spending family time with my inlaws (like for a birthday dinner the Sunday before Christmas, Christmas Eve and Christmas day... we'd be doing stuff together). However, most of the time that we're there it's either watching TV or playing with the kids. We do a lot of that here at the house already and I don't spend time on the PC that much. I'd say the vast majority of the work would be at night when the kids are in bed, or in the van as we're heading up to and coming back from the inlaws.

I really want to get this book into its first draft and to proofread through it, doing some possibly large changes to a majority of the chapters as I make a second editing job before modifying it into a submittable manuscript to several publishers. I wanted to get all of this done before February 1st, which is the date I'd be sending off the finalized product to every Canadian publisher that I can get my hands on.

Is it wrong of me to want to work on this project when we're not doing much during the holidays? I'd print off the pages and do the work like that, but there are quite a few pages that are already written (each chapter has a minimum of 4 pages and a maximum of 20, so I'd say there's about 100 pages of work so far). I can't work on it on my Palm handheld because I have no USB transfer cable anymore. I guess I could take my notebook with me and work on notes covering the short version of each chapter, but I want to do some actual hardcore editing until we get back.

**fixer** · 12-16-2008, 11:55 PM

I don't see it as wrong at all. I am sure you will have some down time and you probably will have it on your mind anyway.

**Kaos Kitty** · 12-17-2008, 12:32 AM

Sounds interesting. What's your book about?

**cmdarlin** · 12-17-2008, 06:29 AM

I don't think its wrong at all. Sure sounds like the mini-notebook would be a wonderful 'early' Christmas gift. Its not like you would have your nose in it the whole trip. I think its great that your writing a book. That's something I always wanted to do. What's yours about?

I hope you have a wonderful Christmas!

Debbie

**MomToTwoBoys** · 12-17-2008, 10:18 AM

I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who feels this way.

It started out as a book about autism, but then I switched it to a book about the basics of frugality and how to get started. It covers things like stockpiling, budgeting, reorganization, etc.