B- Binge

Throughout the many blogposts I've written and read that deal with finding balance (Balance! hey! Another B-word. Does that earn me more points?: *looks around hopefully*) between your writing life and your real life,  I’ve come to the conclusion that I will probably never EVER find that ever elusive balance.

Why, you ask?

Because, I Creepy Query Girl, am a Binger.  (Yes, I know it looks like it should be pronounced ‘bing!-er’,- which sounds way less cool,  but trust me, it’s not.  It’s pronounced binge –er. I looked it up. And Google is never wrong.)

I binge on blogging-go on a month-long kick where I’m up in everybody’s business and blowing up the comment box like a crack head looking for a fix. I even go running around to blogs I don’t know, knocking on their doors and leaving overly-hyper greetings like: ‘NICE TO MEET YOU! I’m a new follower! Isn’t that EXCITING!!???’ in my wake.  But then, I tend to run out of steam to the point where I can barely make my three-posts-a-week deadline.

I binge on writing- Once every six to eight months, an ‘idea’ comes to me, fully formed and I hop on and don’t let go.  I outline, I write, I anguish over the first chapter. Then the second. Then the floodgates open and (in the voice of Forrest Gump) ‘ I AM WRITE-ANG’.  Two weeks pass, two months, three months, sometimes four but every spare minute is spent writing my little heart out until it’s finally in shape to go to betas and then…hmn.  Now that I think about it, I seem to run out of writing steam when it comes time to, you know, revise and all that stuff.  It will get done.  But at a snail’s pace.

I binge on books- Of course, when I’m focused on writing a new project, or blogging like a crazy evangelist, I tend to let reading fall to the wayside.  I might order a book here, or there, but my mind just isn’t ready to settle down into another story, genre, style.  But then, there will be a sudden lull in activity and that’s when I begin.  In the last ten days, I’ve inhaled Rachel Hawkin’s SPELLBOUND, Jeri Smith-Ready’s WICKED GAME and BAD TO THE BONE, Liz Reinhardt’s JUNK MILES, and Kody Keplinger’s SHUT OUT, and I have two more loaded and ready to go. Eventually I know what will happen. But at the moment, like with every binge, I’m just enjoying the indulgence.

How about you? Do you live in a writing world of balance or binging?