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What day of the week is it?

The National Guard has arrived. Not at our house, but in our town and other places across the county to help the stranded and frozen. The Mennonites are here, too.

Image and video hosting by TinyPic Yesterday was another digging out day. I hiked down to the road and reuncovered the mailbox. The new snow and drifts made it impossible for vehicles to get to the house. I canceled my eye doctor appointment for the fourth time. The receptionist just laughed. I called to set up a new frequent flier account at Southwest Air. The lady I talked to cracked up when I told her where I lived.

I bet that it’s really nice in the Bahamas. I’ve never been there. I will probably never go, because I’ve had skin cancer and a beach is at the bottom of my list of vacation spots, unless it is a beach that is attractive in the moonlight. But just say the word: Baaa-haaa-maaaz. Baaa-haaa-maaaz.

Back to yesterday.

Image and video hosting by TinyPic Nearly lost the dog out on the tundra, aka the back yard. The guys with the heavy equipment to dig us out couldn’t come and couldn’t say when they would come.

(Hum “The Rocky Theme”.)

And then! And then!

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Floaty arms

Do you ever stand in a doorway and press your arms against the walls of the door frame and press and press and press until you start to feel like a real doof, then you step away and your arms float up like they have balloons tied to them and it feels a little out of your control and silly and like you don’t know what to do next because, let’s face it, it’s hard to do much with your hands flying up around your ears?

That’s what I feel like now that the draft of the new book is turned in. I have a million things to do, but I’m just wandering around the house not sure what I should do first.

Me = village idiot.

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A heads-up for YA Librarians

Although I can’t go (I’ll be at a writer’s conference – I will def be there next year), YOU should all go to the New York Comic Con. And then you should write to me and tell me the best parts.

Many exciting things seem to be coming out of YALSA right now:
1. the Great Graphic Novel List
2. the upcoming Teen Tech Week
3. plans for a Wiki.

What else am I missing? Please let me know. It is so much fun to watch this field grow and thrive. I bow down to youse guys.

I pulled a marathon writing weekend; 12 and 15 hour days chewing through the manuscript. Except for dry eyes, it was wicked fun. I am loving this…. being so deep in the story, fingers flying over the keys, the characters so close I can reach out and touch them – I love writing so much!!!!!!

(and then there are the days when I hate it, but we won’t go into that right now)

Today, however, few words will be written because of Family Obligations, which I will tell you about tomorrow.

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Mad woman scribbling

I feel like the White Rabbit, chasing after time, trying not to trip over disaster. It doesn’t look like I will need to extend the deadline…. my WIP should be in the hands of my editor a week from today, which is two weeks earlier than I thought.

The goal is to publish the WIP at this time next year, so the editing schedule is tight. I’ll take a couple days off to do my taxes, clean my office, make airplane reservations and prepare for several upcoming conferences, then plunge into Draft 5, which should be pretty close to the final. If all goes well (please, please she begs the gods), the WIP will be done by the time I head out on book tour for TWISTED.

I am thrilled and terrified. And thrilled. And terrified.

I know the next two books that I want to write. One of them has begun to take shape while I’ve been pounding on the WIP. Between travel, book promotion, and family obligations, I doubt I’ll get much writing done between March 15 – June 11th. I’m going to try and use the free corners of time in there for “filling the well” stuff. More on that later.

If I can keep this tentative schedule more or less intact, I’ll start the next WIP in June (hope to have it done by January, 2008 for publication in March 2009) and WIP 2 in January 2009 (for publication in 2010.)

But I have a history of wildly overestimating how much I can accomplish in any one year, so those are flexible dates. The thing now is to plunge back into the page and finish this one up.

A head’s up for what you’ll see here in the Forest next week: Juicy photos of TWISTED and my book tour schedule.

scribblescribblescribble