Category: LHA

Yes, I woke up to the alarm, thank goodness. Made both planes, sat on the runway in Philadelphia in the rain. Talked with a woman who lives in a house built in 1830. She has four dogs, a missing tooth, and a great laugh. I drank tomato juice. By the time I arrived home, the sun was shining on the last of the fire and pumpkin-colored leaves. I do love this season more than anything.

I have to leave again on Tuesday, so this is a busy weekend. My family keeps reminding me that I turn 44 on Sunday. Hard to believe… I still feel fifteen.

Have a glorious weekend everyone. Go outside and enjoy the fresh air!

It’s been a long day, but a fulfilling one. Thanks to everyone from Seneca Ridge and River Bend Middle Schools and Dominion High School for being so nice and making the day fly. I’m going to wear my Dominion shirt home on the plane. I spoke at the public library tonight to a crowd that was much bigger than I expected. The reason? Some smart teachers gave their students 50 bonus points if they showed up and asked questions. They asked very good questions so I scribbled out the 50 and wrote in 100 on their passes.

And how is this for bizarre? There was a group of children’s writers in the audience. No, that wasn’t weird at all. What was weird was that one of them, Valerie, was with me on the same exchange program to Denmark back in 1978. There were 22 American kids in that group and somehow the two of us wound up writing for kids, and in the same library at the same time!!!

(OK, everybody sing It’s A Small World After All now.)

Freaked me all the way out.

I am officially beat. I have to wake up at 4:30 am to make my plane. But I promised I’d post these photos first.

Seneca Ridge students who were good sports about sitting on the floor.

Dominion High School, which has really nice students.

Time to faceplant into the pillow. zzzzzzzzzzzz…….

If every kid in America went to a place like St. Paul’s School for Girls, our country would be just fine. Wow. Genuinely nice people, teachers who know and care deeply about their students, kids who respect themselves…. and a dance studio. I spoke to all the students in grades 8-12, and in the evening, I spoke to a mostly adult audience with Annie Young, who was the driving force behind the SPEAK movie.

This morning I took a cab, a train, another train, and another train to get to Virginia. (Public transportation is one of the things I miss out in the country.) The energetic and talented Linda Holtslander picked me up and gave me a drive through the Virginia countryside on a perfect fall day. Tomorrow I’ll be speaking in various places in Loudoun County, thanks to the public library system here.

Thanks to everyone who shared their work based on the hotel room writing prompt. It was very cool reading them.

Be sure to check out the new homepage at Writerlady.com. Theo Black, my Web God, just redid it for autumn. (Not only is this guy a genius, but he has great taste in women: his wife is one of my favorite authors, Holly Black. Read her books!)

The plan was to be asleep by 9 and be up at 5am to write.

I hadn’t figured on the people who like to roam hotel corridors at all hours and talk about boring things RATHER LOUDLY. Oh, and SLAM DOORS. They woke me up so many times I lost count. (But thanks to several trusty alarms, I got up on time and jumped right back into the pages.)

They weren’t the only busy creatures last night. There is a baby in the room next to me. The kind of baby who is feeling a little stressed by the hotel and the LOUD PEOPLE and the price of gas and lack of affordable health care and itch of a damp diaper. The baby cried a lot. And some loving person talked to her and held her and played the flute to calm her down. So it was an interesting night’s sleep. And it gave me this writing prompt.

Imagine you are in a hotel room, alone. You can’t sleep because of the snatches of conversation and activity you hear in the hall and in the rooms next to yours, above you and below you. You find yourself looking out the peep hole, and pressing your ears to the walls for more details. (Don’t press your ears to the floor. The carpet looks a little skeevey.) Write down what you hear, and what you imagine is going on. Bonus points: turn your raw material into a poem or a short story.

I’m in a hotel somewhere near Baltimore. (The cab driver played NASCAR racer as he drove me from the airport so I kept my eyes closed so I really don’t know where I am.) Today starts work on the next revision of my WIP. The bones seem to be in place, the editor approves of what is there so far, now it’s time to layer in more action and reflection.

I’ll be at St. Paul’s School for Girls in Brooklandville, MD tomorrow, and in Loudoun County, VA schools and libraries on Thursday. I head home for a few days on Friday.

More later. Right now the pens are begging me to pick them up.