Sometime in the next couple of weeks, I’ll have a short (30,000 word) memoir published by Kindle Singles. It’s been a new adventure for me to work with the folks over there for the past six months – an editor, a copyeditor, another editor, a cover designer.

In the last month, I’ve been sticking to a regular writing schedule, getting up at 5:30 am and writing until 7 am when I have to get ready for the day job. This is a practice I’ve often thought I “should” do, and somehow, miraculously, I’m doing it! But I’ve worried that having a book published will make me press the “Pause” button as I obsess over its reception, or lack of reception.

Luckily, I came across this blog post today by the excellent Sydney Lea, who was one of my mentors in the 1990’s at Vermont College of FIne Arts, and also after that. He says “I also seem to go into lulls shortly after the publication of books, and my twelfth collection, No Doubt the Nameless, was published last month. I suppose a psychologist could make something of that tendency to lapse after a book shows up, but it’s not really something that especially troubles me. I used to think, “Uh-oh, I’m all done– out of material.” But I have learned that I seem to revive.”

So I”ll try to chill, like Syd.