Patrick Swenson

It was a whirlwind summer, full of writing opportunities and workshops and conventions and…

Well. The blog post title sounds kind of gloomy, so let me explain. Tomorrow I head back to school to greet students for the new year. (It will be only a partial day of classes since much of the first part of the day is reserved for the incoming freshmen.) I always feel blue as the summer comes to an end, for a variety of reasons. This year, I am bummed I didn’t get more writing done than I did. I’m bummed I won’t see some of my writing friends and convention compadres for a while.

But: It was a whirlwind of a summer, as I said. I attended Clarion West get-togethers ands various author readings. I managed to catch up with a lot of work related to my small book publishing company, Fairwood Press. I got to meet my agent, who was in Seattle for the Pacific Northwest Writers Conference, and I got to attend and be a workshop leader for the Cascade Writers Workshop in Portland Oregon. I traveled to Calgary, Alberta to take part in When Words Collide, a genre convention for writers. I went to Montana to visit my family. I had lots of time hanging out with my son Orion. And just this weekend I traveled to San Antonio for the 71st Worldcon, and even got to hold a Hugo Award won by Joss Whedon for The Avengers. (He wasn’t there, so the award was accepted by someone else. I managed to wrest it away for a few minutes.)

I’m excited for the new school year, I really am. It’ll just take some time to adjust. Mostly, I have to adjust my sleep schedule, which is completely contrary to my natural pattern of night owlness. I’ve got good classes, a lot of eager students (I’m overloaded in three of the classes at the moment), and plenty of learning to pass on. I also, as usual, find myself a bit innundated with more Fairwood to-dos. And due to a lackluster summer of writing, I’ll have to crank up the heat on writing book two.

Sleep can sometimes be a premium during the school year. How often do you give up on a few hours of shut-eye to get things done? It seems almost a given. I still put in a few all-nighters during the year just to catch up with the tasks that stack up.

I was at school most of the day, and dragged myself back home by 11 p.m. And now it’s officially tomorrow, just past midnight. There’s a late load of laundry going right now, still in the wash cycle. Oops! Gotta get those bills paid for the month too.

What am I doing here writing this blog? I’ve got work to do!