I’m taking my summer vacation starting this Saturday through July 11. Guess where I’m going? Broadway—about a 15-minute walk away. Or maybe a nearby cafe to get a change of scenery, maybe that Starbucks on Christopher where I wrote the freelance books, maybe there. Yeah, I’m taking my precious vacations days this summer to not leave the city and to not go to the beach. I’m going to write. It’ll be a mini writers retreat here in steamy Manhattan, the sweat and noise as usual except I won’t have to go to work and so it will be ten million times better. When I originally arranged for the days off, I wanted to make a whole plan about what I’d be working on—the revision of my novel, or a few first chapters of the new one, or three short stories, or, I don’t know, the plans kept changing. But right now I’m saying no rules, no assignments, no set deadlines. I’m just going to write every day, and it can be anything I feel like writing. I’m truly excited about this time off from work. I feel like I’m going to the Bahamas.

It's weird, walking around today, not in the midst of writing anything. My headspace is so far out of the clouds it may as well be stuffed with moss. All I did today is go to work, go home, and work some more. (Yes, the red pencil is at my elbow.) Oh, and watch TV. It's like when I was a kid and didn't have a book to read. I felt so aimless, so empty! My mother called it "bookless"—those lost days when I was in between things to read. I've got to rectify this, and soon. This is how years of your life get eaten.