Upside, Downside

You cheer when a publisher says she likes the work; you put your head in your hands when she says she needs another thirty pages. No unadulterated good here. But I'm about to root around in my notebook and journals, see what I've missed, and talk to a photographer friend about rounding out the manuscript with pictures, a suggestion from said publisher. All this comes as I face a very full plate: house sitting, helping coordinate a poetry service for my fellowship, a lead on a part-time dream job, a 9-week writing program to facilitate in the fall, three weeks of pre-paid vacation that I really cannot forgo, an editing project for The Cafe Review, coordinating a poetry reading for our public auditorium, and, oh, yeah, working on that novel I just started. Who said there's no work for writers? There's no pay for writers, but plenty of work. If I seem a little distant for the next few weeks, you'll understand.