Here in the Upside Down, by Catriona

How do you maintain your writing life during the “in-between” seasons? How do you keep going between book deals, day jobs, drafts, or deadlines? What systems or habits help you stay connected to your work when there’s no external validation?

Attention librarians, reviewers
booksellers and bloggers!
This is on NetGalley

The blog title is because I really feel this question is the wrong way round for me. Or, maybe, I don't understand the idea that the bit where there's no publishing business going on is the "in-between" season.

For me, an entire month with no meetings, negotiations, publication days, proofs etc is delicious. It's just me and the story, holed up together, hand in hand, day by day, making steady progress. That is the job. And I still love it, twenty-five years and thirty-eight books in. 

This is serious lemonade I'm making here, by the way. I'm at home with another ten weeks of twice weekly physiotherapy (and the brutal three times a day, twenty reps of eight exercises each, in between appointments). So I've got a vested interest in focussing the fact that an unexpectedly quiet summer has given me the time and space to attempt a great big structural leap for my next book. 

I should be in Scotland, researching, and nipping down to London on the train to meet my agent and one editor for lavish lunches, then driving into the wilds of Yorshhire to meet my other editor for a deli lunch involving more cheese than a Barry Manilow tribute karaoke night at a dairy farm. And, of course, Bloody Scotland.

And even if I wasn't there, I should be at Bouchercon. Hmphrey Bogart! Which is the biggest hmph there is.

But here I am instead, busy at draft one of standalone eleven - The Railway Adults (working title (obviously)) - literally two things in my diary for the whole of September and October combined. 

But what two things they are! First of all, I'm presenting a craft workshop on clues at the renowned Sisters In Crime, Desert Sleuths WriteNOW!2025.

I'm also joining a panel on keeping the creative juices flowing, as it happens. Thankfully, this was always meant to be virtual so I don't have to get to Arizona lashed to the roofrack, like a Romney dog. 

In October - when surely I'll be able to bend this &*%$ing knee - I'm going to be joining the real live physical fun of my own SinC chapter's craft workshop Criminally Good, as keynote speaker. 

And then . . . Christmas. Or rather, and then . . . the whole of November and three weeks of December hammering out the first draft of Last Ditch number eight, SCOT SOMETHING (working title (obviously)), before collapsing onto the couch with a pile of books and chocolate. 

I will break off around the 2nd of December to launch SCOT'S EGGS, but it won't be much of a break. In fact, I'll have to concentrate hard to keep talking about the right book. Seriously. I was pounding out the first draft of HOP SCOT - the Christmas one - when SCOT IN A TRAP - the Thanksgiving one - came out and I took totally the wrong decorations and nibbles to the party. 

Just kidding - it wasn't quite that bad

In conclusion, you can't really complain too much about your woes when the cancellation of everything you were looking forward to results in more of what you love most anyway.

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