Read Christine Kohler on keeping an emotions journal [yours truly is quoted]

Photo by Jacek HalickiIt’s been a long time since that idyllic trip to the Adirondacks: cue the big sigh. Cobwebs are dangling all over this blog since then, however, but before I go into “poor poor pitiful me” mode to make my excuses for that, let me first do a little crowing. My friend and colleague Christine Kohler—author of the YA historical novel No Surrender Soldier—has a new blog post over at UncommonYA that is well worth reading. It’s about how keeping an emotions journal can help writers create more vivid, compelling characters. Christine did me the honor of quoting me on the subject, too, so please head on over and check it out. 

So other than contributing, in a small way, to that blog post, what has been keeping me silent here? Well, first I had to pay for my month in the mountains kayaking by coming home and working through a mountain of manuscript critiques. It’s work I love, mind you, so I’m not complaining. But it took a while. After which I dashed off to DisneyWorld with my sisters and parents in mid-September. It was the first time I’ve ever been there without kids in tow, and it was fun enjoying it as a grown-up: despite the punishing 104 degree heat. I love the Haunted Mansion!

Then I came home and had a total knee replacement on Sept. 30th: ouch. I’d been dreading this for years, but when you can’t keep up at the Magic Kingdom with your 83-year-old mother who’s had spinal surgery, you know it’s time.

Not my knee, but close
According to everyone, I’m having the most phenomenal recovery in the annals of medicine—so much so that I’ve scheduled the second op for the other knee in early December.

Still, this surgery has knocked the wind out of my sails. What I call “Pain Brain” makes it hard to string three coherent words together into a sentence, much less be creative. So I hope you’ll forgive the silence of the past few months, and the silence to come. But it will all be worth it: and next year I’ll come back stronger than ever.