Caution: Construction Zone

What on earth was I thinking?

It’s Monday and a whole new month, the month of romance!

But I’m not going to talk about that. (hahaha)

I’ve been hunkered down here in Ice Station Zebra, working on Book 6 of my Project Enterprise series (isn’t that a compelling title? Yeah, working on that, too!) and rebranding the covers for Books 1-5 (and the short story collection), to get ready for the (finally) new release.

Because I plot by the seat-of-my-pants (often called a pantster), I have a lot of techniques for moving/hauling/shoving my plot forward. It’s kind of a weird quirk (I’ll bet that’s a shock lol) about me, that puzzles and the like help my brain. I used to do physical jigsaw puzzles to help me think, but I kept losing the pieces, and that created a whole new level of OCD. Now I have a jigsaw puzzle app. No lost pieces. Score!

And sometimes I rearrange my space or add something new. So in between typing this last week, I built a desk. Not from scratch, of course. Out of a box.

Okay, drawers should be easy…not…

Building the desk was a lot like writing my book. It included:

• Unclear path forward (yes, there were [sketchy] instructions #notthathelpful)

• Messy pile of pieces that look overwhelming

•  Pieces that looked like pieces, but weren’t

• Some false starts

• Parts that I thought would be easy and turned out to be hard

• Parts that I thought would be hard and turned out to be easy

•  Parts that looked hard and were hard

• Under-the-hood stuff that is a bit messy but can’t be seen

I’ll be honest, I thought the chair would be easy and did it first, so I’d have a place to sit while I worked on the desk and wow, not sure if it was me or the chair. But as you can see it all came together in the end (mostly).

Luckily the parts I had trouble with don’t show. lol

It gives me hope that the book will come together, too. In the meantime, if you haven’t already, check out the Project Enterprise series. Or at least check out the sassy new covers and let me know what you think.

So, do you ever use a seemingly unrelated activity to help you with a challenging (or stuck) activity? Did that question even make sense? If it didn’t, what should I have said?

I love comments so much that I pick a favorite to receive my monthly AnaBanana gift basket ($25 value).  (And don’t forget that once a quarter I’ll be tossing in something fun from the Perilously Fun Shop!) Recipient is announced the first blog post of the new month.

And guess what? This is a bit past the first blog post (sorry about that – Friday was a cover reveal day instead of a wormhole day), but announcing the winner for January:

Colleen Keehne!

Anabanana will be in touch with you about how to get your gift basket! Thanks for supporting the blog!

Perilously yours,

Pauline