Changes

Today we're delighted to welcome Guest Blogger Barb Ross to Working Stiffs.

By Barbara Ross 

Even after all these years out of school, fall still makes me think of sharp pencils, clean notebooks and endless possibilities. This year that’s truer than ever. On July 26, three friends and I announced we were going to be the new editors of the Level Best Books anthologies. On August 5, the company where I was Chief Operating Officer was sold. And on August 18, my first novel The Death of an Ambitious Woman was released.

So here I am, headspinningly fast, soon to be unemployed, promoting my book, co-editing a short story anthology due at the printers, um, yesterday, and trying to finish the next novel. And I have never been happier.

In The Death of an Ambitious Woman, my protagonist is going through change as well. The novel opens the day Acting Police Chief Ruth Murphy finds out she’s won the selection process for permanent chief. In her six months in the “acting” role, she’s discovered that she loves the job. But there are times when the responsibility weighs heavily and she misses the camaraderie of peers.

So while Ruth climbs up her particular brand of the corporate ladder (the municipal ladder?), I’m at home. Trying to figure out how to manage my time now that I don’t have all those meetings to tell me where to be and what I need to know before I get there. For so long, the rhythms of my year were determined by the corporate calendar—sales meeting, user conference, industry conference, planning and budgeting. Do it again next year.

How will I find my new routine? How have those of you who’ve moved from structured to unstructured work done it?

Stephen King

“There are certain things I do if I sit down to write,” he said. “I have a glass of water or a cup of tea. There’s a certain time I sit down, from 8:00 to 8:30, somewhere within that half hour every morning,” he explained. “I have my vitamin pill and my music, sit in the same seat, and the papers are all arranged in the same places. The cumulative purpose of doing these things the same way every day seems to be a way of saying to the mind, you’re going to be dreaming soon.

“It’s not any different than a bedtime routine,” he continued. “Do you go to bed a different way every night? Is there a certain side you sleep on?" -- Lisa Rogak, Haunted Heart: The Life and Times of Stephen King

Gustave Flaubert

“Days were as unvaried as the notes of the cuckoo.” -- Frederick Brown, Flaubert: A Biography

The Death of an Ambitious Woman is Barbara Ross’ first novel. In July, Barbara became one of the editor/publishers at Level Best Books which has produced and anthology of crime stories by New England writers every fall for the last seven years. The eighth edition, titled Thin Ice will be released in November 2010. Barbara and her husband divide their time between Somerville, Massachusetts, and Boothbay Harbor, Maine.