Autumn is my favorite time of year, and I’ve started trying to plan my work so that I have light duty in October. For a long time, I seemed to be in a pattern of writing a first draft in October, which meant that I was in all-or-nothing mode and not doing much else other than writing, and then I’d finish the draft and emerge from my writing cave to realize that the best part of the year had passed without me noticing it. It wasn’t so bad in Texas, since fall usually came in random days during October, and it finally felt like fall around Thanksgiving. Now that I’ve moved, October feels like October should (mostly), and after my first year here, when I was drafting a book during October, I’ve made an effort to break the pattern.

I suspect that a lot of this pattern comes from that “back to school” mentality in September. That’s when I tend to start writing a new series. I do the research and pre-writing work in September, then start drafting in October, and once you sell a book and start that pattern, your deadlines usually line up for the same time every year.

Oddly, as much as October is my favorite time of year, I’m not a huge fan of Halloween. I’m not opposed to it. I find aspects of it amusing. It’s fun to see kids in costumes or see the yard decorations. I just mostly lost interest in observing it myself once I aged out of trick-or-treating. I’m not fond of adult Halloween parties, and I don’t like scary things, so I don’t do Halloween activities like watching scary movies.

What I do like is being outdoors. This is the perfect time of year for it, not too hot (well, except for some days this year) and not too cold (except for some days this year). I like the colorful leaves, apple cider, baked goods with cinnamon and other spices, soup, sweaters, and all things cozy. It’s a good time for hiking or just walking around town. The past couple of days, I’ve walked over to the park to go to the Friends of the Library book sale in the park gym, which meant looking at the trees along the way and generally enjoying being outdoors, then obtaining as many books as I could carry. Yesterday, I took a picnic lunch to eat in the park and hung out for a while, doing some writing work, before I walked home with my book haul. The only thing that would have made it better would have been if it was a bit cooler, the kind of day where you want to make some hot tea when you get home. Instead, I was sweating and needed lots of cool water.

This has been a weird fall, weather-wise. We seemed to go straight from summer to November, then back to summer, and we haven’t a lot of days that were properly October. Now we have a chance of a freeze this weekend, and we haven’t yet really had just a regular fall day. My outdoor plants are still blooming, and I still have tomatoes, so I guess I’ll cover the plants overnight. The trees are still just starting to turn. Next week will probably be the best time to hit the Blue Ridge Parkway to see the mountains in full color. Maybe we’ll get a proper fall day, when it’s nippy in the morning, crisp and cool in the afternoon, warm enough to be out and about with a sweater on, but you want a cup of hot tea when you come home.

When/if that happens, I’ll be ready to take the day to enjoy it, since I’m not writing a first draft right now.

As I continue to recover from my vacation, I’ve been thinking more about how I’d go about making a vacation that I don’t need a vacation to recover from, and the solution may be a “staycation,” taking a break without going anywhere. Then I can get good sleep because I’m sleeping in my own bed and I don’t get tired from the return trip. But the trick is to make it different enough that it feels like a real vacation and not just being at home with more goofing off. This will take some strategy.

For one thing, it would take some prep work. The house would need to be clean enough that I wouldn’t feel like I should be doing housework, so the staycation would be preceded by a day or so of good cleaning. I’d also want to prepare some food in advance. I might go out for breakfast one or two days (since we do have some good breakfast spots I’ve been wanting to try), but I might make some waffles to throw into the toaster and have a pretend hotel breakfast buffet, and I’d want some ingredients for a lunch to pack for a picnic, maybe some special treats to enjoy in the evening.

Then it would take planning and even scheduling to make sure I do stuff instead of just hanging around and goofing off. Fortunately, I live in a tourist attraction kind of place, so it’s very easy to play tourist locally just by walking around town. There’s even more stuff to see within an hour of driving. I think on my hypothetical vacation, I’d start with a day trip so that coming home could feel like checking into a hotel (I might even put a chocolate on my pillow and fold the toilet paper end into a little triangle). Then walk downtown to go out to dinner. The next day would be an active day, taking a picnic and going on a hike in the park or doing some kind of local sightseeing, with a relaxing evening. I’d try to schedule the relaxation to make sure I do it — actually watch the movie or read the book and do the spa treatments. Maybe a less intense day of just sitting on the deck or porch and reading. And then a short day trip to give the sense of leaving and coming back home with the “hotel” becoming a house once more, but with a relaxing evening to unwind from the whole thing. I might try limiting online time so I can do things that are fun but not get into the mindset of work.

I’ll have to see where I can fit that in this fall, since I’ve scheduled for a light month and I’ll be wanting to hit the usual places to see the autumn colors. One of my day trips can be heading into the mountains, then there’s a park nearby with interesting rock formations that I’ve been wanting to visit. I’ll just need to find a stretch of time with the right weather for it. I want to try to do several consecutive days instead of grabbing a day here and there so that I can properly unwind. I’ve read research that says it takes about three days of a change of the usual pace before you actually start to reset.

Of course, I can’t really turn my brain off. It’ll be playing with story ideas, but that’s part of what I do for fun. I’d probably come out of this with several new ideas or with something I’ve been working on entirely replotted.