March 5, 2006
It's 1:30 Sunday afternoon and I'm taking a short break from an article draft I'm battling through to talk about why I'm working on a Sunday afternoon, when I could otherwise be flat on my back on the sofa with a good book, watching TV, at the movies, walking my dog, or otherwise having a life.

Some of this may be some version of procrastination come to roost. I'm determined to get a draft of an article about new applications for traditional mass spectrometry done today. The deadline is Friday and the subject--I'll be totally honest here--is over my head. That's okay. I talked to the experts and they're doing all the heavy lifting. Still, I need time. It's also a long article, a total of 2600 words. That's okay, it pays $.85 a word.

I kept putting off writing the rough draft. Primarily because I had other things to do--deadlines, etc., and this article had a long deadline. The majority of the interviews were completed weeks ago, and I'll still have to hunt up at least one or two more graphics for the article. I shouldn't have put it off, and that's why I'm working on it today. So if shit happens this week--which it's bound to--I will have time to deal with things. Or, if everything runs smoothly, I can breath easier and keep my stress level down. Or, having completed the rewrite of The Serpent's Kiss, I can finish the synopsis for the Midnight Ink sales people of The Devil's Pitchfork and get back to working on the novel I had to set aside for a week or so.

Priorities, after all. Still got to pay the bills.

There is a part of me that hopes I'll never have to write an article like this again--it's hard work, for me the mental equivalent of laying cement. On the other hand, a bird in the hand, a good-paying market, and the ability to do it where I know some people can't at all, well, that's called working for a living. Which is what I guess I'm doing. And I'd better get back to it. Still got about 1600 more words to crank through.

Best,
Mark Terry