Finishing my manuscript by Juliana Aragon Fatula

Dear Reader,

I've been studying herbal medicine and reading books on holistic healing. I want to learn as much as I can about indigenous plants where I live. I use everything I learn from reading to develop my characters. In my manuscript, The Colorado Sisters, my private investigator, LA, learns from her abuelita, her grandmother, how to use plants to make medicine. I'm learning about dosages and experimenting on myself.

I am a lifetime learner and love to read books about astronomy, climate change, politics.

I believe to write well, a person should read lots of books.

I also read books by authors on writing.

I've learned a great deal about writing from studying master writers.

Someday, I hope to be a master writer and crank out mysteries.

I feel like an amateur mystery writer and my confidence needs boosting.

I want to go on a writing vacation. I'll write all day and read all night, undisturbed.

At home, I'm picking grapes, apples, peaches and spending time in my kitchen processing my harvests.

But this winter when the snow flies, I'll be locked down, writing. I'll ignore the laundry, the dishes, the cooking and just write. I'll escape to my room of my own, my friend, Dr. Noel, lets me hide out at her house and leaves me to write. At home, I get distracted by chores.

I know I've written about this before. I apologize. I'm trying to work it out by writing about why I put off writing to garden, harvest, process the bounty from my Chicana Garden.

I could just let others pick it and haul it off and do all the work. So I've compromised and let my son and his girlfriend pick the apples. If they take the apples and bake pies for me that would be great, but I have a feeling they are too busy to do the real dirty work. So I'll be peeling, slicing, dehydrating and storing apples for the winter.

My husband is off hunting this month. He provides our meat: elk, deer, moose, that I then have to cook. I can't just let it go to waste. I have to cook every night because we have a freezer full of game.  Maybe I should just let my husband cook it since he killed it. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed with the amount of work I do to keep him fed and happy.

I've decided to leave home when he returns from hunting and let him deal with the apples. I've made grape juice, peach juice, pies, zucchini bread...

I'm pooped and I need a vacation. A working vacation where I can write all day, undisturbed. I've earned it and I'm going to do it.

My husband and son are going to have to fend for themselves and learn that mom has other priorities besides taking care of them.

I advise my students not to learn to cook so they don't get stuck in the kitchen. I realize it is my own fault that I'm stuck in the kitchen because I'm a good cook. Y, que?

This mystery isn't going to write itself. I have a book waiting to be born and my dedication to my craft has to have precedence. I have to set goals and deadlines and finish my story.

This is my life and I am setting boundaries.

Just saying.