Email bankruptcy, or, attempting to cope

I am in crunch time. I am in crunchy crunch time. The busyness I have been complaining about has rebounded on itself and leapt to a whole new level of busy. In a word: Aaaarggghh!!!!

I’m going to keep blogging. I made a little bet with myself to see if I could blog every day of July and so far so good. I hate to lose bets with myself. Especially fun ones. Also blogging kind of clears my head. Dunno why but when I’m deep in writing, blogging really helps me to unwind—that and a glass of wine.

However, I’ll no longer be replying to comments as much as I have been (which I know has been down on what it used to be)—Sorry! The UFB has to be rewritten and that’s my top priority.

Then there’s the email problem. A while back John Green declared email bankruptcy. I think I may have to do the same. I have more than five hundred unanswered emails, which I know is nothing compared to Cory Doctorow who gets, like, two thousand a day, but, well, I ain’t coping. Important emails are getting lost in the shuffle. So I’m going to put them all in a folder to be dealt with after crunch time. I hope that if it was important folks will resend.

I’m very sorry for not replying. I suck.

So from now until I’ve finished the rewrites and made solid inroads into the new novel, I’ll be very bad about answering email and your comments here. And if I am responding to comments here in the next few months—that means I’m being an evil procrastinator and you have my full permission to hassle me about it.

Now I return to the UFB.

Posted by Justine at 11:44, 28 July 2007 under Bloggery, Excuses, How To Ditch Your Fairy, Whingeing | 8 Comments »

Comments

amirah Says:

hey justine! i just wanted to tell you that i finished reading magic’s child this week and that i absolutely loved the trilogy! (i’d've written the word “loved” in capitals, but they don’t exist on here, do they?) i’m from malaysia and i got strangely excited about the mention of rambutans in magic’s child. =) can’t wait for the next one!

July 28th, 2007 at 11:53 AM
Dawn Says:

As a loyal reader of your blog and your works, I completely respect your need to focus on ufb. I want to read it asap, after all! Sometimes I wish I could get that many emails so I could be cool like you and John Green and declare email bankruptcy. Alas, I’m far too devoted to checking my email multiple times a day…and it often says 0 new emails. hehe. Anyway, I hope everything is still going well! Good luck.

July 28th, 2007 at 1:10 PM
niki Says:

you should really get your spam filter fixed…

July 28th, 2007 at 3:28 PM
Rebecca Says:

will miss you but yay ufb!!

July 28th, 2007 at 3:44 PM
Rebecca Says:

all your caps are belong to justine!!

bwahahahahahahahahaha!! just noticed the tagline above the comment box. alright, sorry, leaving now.

July 28th, 2007 at 3:49 PM
janet Says:

Well, now I understand why you haven’t replied to my email about the exciting chervil sighting in my local grocery. I’m not offended. Really.

July 28th, 2007 at 4:22 PM
Tim Walker Says:

Help with e-mail is close at hand. Try this:

A Low-Fi Solution to E-Mail Overload: Sentenc.es

The *very* short version: pick a small number of sentences (e.g. four) and commit to answering every e-mail in that number of sentences or less. It makes the task of going through a loaded inbox much less daunting, since you know there’s only so long any one reply will take.

My extra piece of advice: add a short note to your e-mail signature that says something funny like “Please pardon typos, run-ons, lacunae, and incoherent syllogisms: I’m wrestling a big piece of writing and it’s not clear just now which of us is winning.”

Hope this is helpful – good luck with your big project!

July 28th, 2007 at 9:47 PM
nichole Says:

1) you do not suck. at. all. not even a little bit.

2) i don’t understand why people look at me wierd when i talk about my shopping fairy or my parking fairy. Oh, but they will totally understand once your book comes out. They will understand, even if I have to sit on top of them and read the entire book out loud.

3)not answering hundreds of emails is a valid lifestyle choice. that’s just what happens when you’re a literary rock star.

4) we still love and adore you.

5) I will gladly give you all of my big letters.

July 29th, 2007 at 11:48 AM