Now is the time to Make Circles with Mints

A Writer's Life
Written By Rebecca Grabill

I did it. I typed those two most-loved words: The End. Yet how have I felt these past few days? (Aside from the delirious exhaustion of Christmas with five children!)

Happy? Relieved? 

Try overwhelmed, trepidatious, indecisive. Because I have the question of, "What will my agent think?" and how far from done am I really? Will she say, Good start! In another 200 pages you'll have something! Or what every writer dreams, It's perfect! I'll send this out ASAP! (The latter doesn't happen. Ever. Just saying.) I'm not actually worried about either response. I like revision. No. I love revision. The real issue for me is: Now what?

For months I've had a single goal and purpose: finish. Now I'm wide open. More picture books? Pre-MFA novels that need revision? A new work? Those memoirs I've started? Not that I'd consider taking a break. It's been almost a week since typing The End and I'm climbing the walls. My mind doesn't rest, so my pen/fingertips/keyboard can't either. So on to the next. Something. Anything. Because now is the time to make circles with mints, do not haste any longer.

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Rebecca Grabill

Rebecca has been writing since childhood, her first book about a kitten published between homemade cardboard covers in second grade. Although she studied religion and philosophy in university, she continued writing, earning an MFA from Hamline University and publishing multiple picture books (no longer with homemade covers) and a collection of poetry with a variety of New York and independent publishers. She has also published a wide array of fiction, essays, and poetry in magazines and journals and photographs for Getty Images. She balances writing with homeschooling the younger of her six children, launching her young adults, church activities, and overseeing a small flock of chickens in rural West Michigan.

www.rebeccagrabill.com
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