With the book done and off to the editor, there is now a large space, at least temporarily, where the book used to exist in my head. Almost before I hit send on the email with the manuscript, all sorts of new projects and to-do items rushed into fill the void. I wrote them down. It was a long list. It needed some prioritization.

I remembered the quote from Toni Morrison: “I wrote a list of the things I had to do,” she once explained. “I found sixty three. Then I wrote another list of the things I wanted to do. I found two–write and mother my children.”

That provides a bit of clarity.