A Week of Normal (pretty please?!)

Harpswell, Maine. Photo by my husband, John

As much as I love the holidays, it's nice to have a normal week ahead. I've been doing family things and working on my next book and organizing my spring events.

Before the end of the school year, I have trips to Colorado, California, Minnesota, New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and I'll see lots of Maine--including a long drive north to Presque Isle, which is a part of Maine I haven't seen since I was a teenager. It'll be a nice mix of events and trips and audiences, and I'll get to meet some online friends for the first time! So I have a lot to look forward to!

But for the next few weeks, it's all about writing. I have one more novel under contract, and I'm working on that. I'm trying to practice what I preach at my school visits about first drafts.

As I tell the kids, "First drafts are the worst part of writing for me. That's because the story in my head is always so much better than what shows up on those first draft pages." I know that those thrilling and unsatisfying first drafts are part of the process, though--at least for me.

Last night, I put a box on the "My Books" page of my website for my 2011 book, Happy Birthday, Hamster. That book comes out in August, which has felt very far away. But when I made this little ticker for it a couple days ago, I was stunned, because suddenly "next year" became:


 


which doesn't feel so long away!