tomorrow is the day

Well, tomorrow is the day. Tomorrow I will hand over my next book, “Sardinian Knotted Embroidery”, to my printers’ Australian rep. I’ve never actually done a face to face hand over before. Usually I parcel it all up and send it via courier. It’s a bit new for me, but it will be nice to spend some time talking about book printing with the printing fellow.

This time, writing the book has felt like a very different process for me. The most important difference is that I am not stressed. I’ve been working solidly, with very long hours, but I’ve been much more pleasant to be around. I think my family has appreciated this!

I’ve done a lot of pondering about why my stress levels are so low this time. I’ve come up with a few possibilities.

My husband thinks the cruise writing retreat was a huge contributor, because I knocked over so much of it and got a lot of thinking, writing, planning and problem solving done, without the pressures of everyday life. (And I’m all for him thinking that, because maybe then it will happen again?!)

I think that a main contributor will have been the fact that this time I brought my laptop out to the living area of the house and worked out there, instead of being stuck away in my office. It meant that I was able to continue to feel a part of family life.

But I think the biggest contributor has been that this time, I’ve got my diet sorted out. Ever since we came back from Ethiopia about four years ago, I haven’t been quite right. However, about a year or so ago, my daughter (with the same issues) and I started on the low FODMAPs diet, on the advice of our doctor. It has made a huge difference, and a very positive one. An unexpected consequence is that now I feel that I am now much more even tempered, and more expectedly, I am just generally in much better health.

So now that the book is so close to being complete, I have very mixed emotions. I feel extreme happiness (I walked around the shops while doing the grocery shopping today with a huge smile on my face), and yet also some sadness. I’ve enjoyed this book so much and now I have to say goodbye to it. All good things must come to an end…

However, even though the book files will have gone off to the printer, there will be a lot of promotional stuff to do.

I’ll need to make sure that all my distributors have everything they need to promote the book. I’m planning to make another promotional video, like I did for Portuguese Whitework. I’ll organise some book reviews, and other things so that people will hear about my book. I’ll also need to get my website up to date, with all the details of the book, so that you can start ordering it. So as you can see, there’s still lots to keep me off the streets!

But after all the hard work that I’ve just completed, I’m planning to take a day or two off. I’m going to watch some Grand Designs, read some books, and maybe do some window shopping (or lèche-vitrine as The Reader likes to call it, because that amusingly translates as “window licking”). And I might do some cooking – apart from every day meals!

And then I’m going to have to think about what comes next… The next book… Plans for classes…

I love my work. 🙂