Going Nuts

It happened last night. My mind shut down.

This happens now and again when I have been writing like a crazy man. I have so many projects going at once, and more than enough requests and deadlines, that I have to take a break and sort my nuts.

For the past two months, I've been writing from a large can of assorted/mixed nuts that are, in essence, making me crazy. I wake in the middle of the night to fix a paragraph in a story. I scribble a note on the dashboard dust while driving down the road at sixty miles per hour. I stuff my wallet full of tiny slips of paper containing inane and incoherent phrases and ideas that pop into my head for various essays, articles and proposals.

ENOUGH!

I've taken a break the last two evenings to get my mind in order, and also to create order out of nutty chaos. For example, I realized that every night for the past week I have written all or bits-and-pieces of the following:

* A sermon

* Dozens of emails and letters to various editors, agents, archivists, and (fans?)

* A track for a CD

* Huge chunks of a novel that I hope to complete by month's end

* A full book proposal that I sent to a senior editor at Abingdon Press

* A column for Together magazine

* A piece of humor that I sent to the New Yorker

* A cover letter and a book to an award winner from a youth ministry web site

* Many blog entries

And for good measure, I also read and proofed Becky's final exam powerpoint presentation, one of her reflection papers, two Atlantic monthly magazines, a New Yorker magazine, and read two books rather lengthy books. No TV for me since the Duke/Butler game. Zippo.

But tonight . . . perhaps a movie after the finance meeting. Perhaps an Andy Griffith Show rerun (with Earnest T. Bass). Or, if the wife is in the mood . . . heck, I'll even . . . clean the shower!