Dog Toys Dilemma

So this is just a ramble of some strangely poetic comparison I made between me and my younger polar bear. He's actually a Samoyed, but at 80lbs full grown I call them my polar bears. Truthfully I think they think they're Pomeranians. It makes for fun trips to the dog park.

Mama's bears. Yuki (bottom) and Kai (on his head).

Back on topic though! My younger bear, Kai, has a bad habit of picking one toy out of the hundred or so sitting in the corner and loving it to death. These are the big durable ones for tough dogs too mind you. He's just kind of a cute beast. As I was throwing out pieces of Mr. Crab this morning I saw him searching through his toy box for his next victim. I don't think he means to kill them, he just loves them too much and they can't handle all his love/teeth.

Maybe it was the glass of wine I'd had with breakfast (poor life decision right there) but I was suddenly having this weird idea that, like Kai, I was loving my work too much. With seventeen days until the PNWA summer conference, every spare moment I have has been spent at a computer combing through my manuscript. Chopping. Rewriting. Reading things I wrote the night before and hating them. I was killing it. It took a puppy polar bear and a glass of Coco Rosso to make me see that.

I love Zhukov. It's my seventh complete novel and my favorite so far. I was going through my older work and of course there are bits which just make me smile, but never have I felt so confident and fully committed to a story as I have with this one.

So I took the rest of the day off. I called out sick from work, got out with a friend I haven't seen in a while, played with the polar bears and cuddled with my boyfriend. At the end of the day I sat down at my desk and opened Zhukov back up. It was like I had a new set of eyes and a full tank of energy to face it. That said, I'm going to try to take a step back for at least a little while every day. I know it's crunch time but I feel like if I don't take a breath every now and then I'm going to just rip my story apart like poor Mr. Crab.