For my sanity and productivity, I’ve set aside a few weeks each year when I won’t travel. These are not “open” weeks; they’re weeks spent in a deep communion with the keyboard. It’s my way of fighting for some balance.
This is not, however, to say that I can just curl up on the mythical bench alongside that mythical rain-streaked window and scribble genius thoughts.
Instead, I’m doing some catch-up: laundry; reorganizing my office (again), reordering bookmarks for latter spring events; corresponding with folks like: author/illustrator Katie Davis (who’s off to Kindling Words); author Haemi Balgassi (whose blog I read daily); author/Austin SCBWI RA Julie Lake (get well soon!); author/librarian/goddess/guru Sharron L. McElmeel (who requested a contribution from me and Greg for her work in progress); and sparkling new voice D.L. Garfinkle, who enjoyed my recommendation of her hysterical debut novel, Storky (Putnam, 2005)(you must read it!).
What else?
Reading a novel manuscript from Anne Bustard, whose much anticipated picture book biography Buddy: The Story Of Buddy Holly (Simon & Schuster, 2005), is due out February 1.
I’m also shopping online. Because I travel so often (and was raised by a bargain hunter), much of my wardrobe is made up of acetate/spandex from Coldwater Creek‘s online outlet. Try finding a stretch velvet tank dress in forest green for $15 anywhere else. Woo woo.
Spent twenty minutes searching the house high and low for my ARC of Prom by Laurie Halse Anderson (Viking, 2005)–big, buzzy YA this year; already getting stars and nods from awards predictors. LHA is among those people I most flat-out adore in the biz. We first met at the Michigan Reading Association conference in Detroit a few years back.
So, anyway, this is me, running around the house, lifting pillows and shooing cats, exclaiming, “I lost my Prom! I lost my Prom!”
My husband is all: “Cutie, I think you may have lost more than that.” As in my mind.
He’s so clever. Hmph.
Did he actually say that? Well, not per se. I’m just paraphrasing the raised eyebrow.
Yes, after ten years of marriage, I can get all that from an eyebrow.
P.S. I will get a scene done today; two pages minimum!