Well, instead of groveling for bloggle forgiveness for my inexcusable absence, I’m merely going to chalk it up to an excellent example of how I write.

What an great idea, you’re saying. Why didn’t I think of that excuse myself, you wonder. Why? Because I’m simply BRILLIANT and full of sh…arp ideas!

So, here’s the thing. This past weekend was Writer’s Day here in the LA chapter of SCBWI and one of the speakers was Gail Carson Levine. Someone asked her what her writing schedule was like. She stalled for a moment, then revealed the awesome truth.

I have a laptop, she said in Sara’s fairly accurate paraphrase, and I write when I eat breakfast. And lunch. And I write while I eat dinner. I tend to fall asleep while I’m writing and at least I can’t sleep while my mouth is moving.

Ok. Hands down one of the best answers to that question EVER.

So, inspired by that wonderfully bizarre and revealing answer, I realized that this blog is clear proof of my writing style and schedule. Sometimes I write consistently. Sometimes erratically. Sometimes I seemingly abandon my writing all together. But no matter how my ‘active’ writing process is going, I am always, _always_, ALWAYS thinking about my stories.

When I go to the Battlestar Galactica concert featuring the amazing music from that amazing show, I find in the music a soundtrack to my novel that uncovers the sense of urgency I’ve been trying to inject into my key scenes.

When I go to the bookstore to peruse the new picture books, I find a book that uses page turns in just the way that will give my picture book the added momentum it needs.

And when I get angry at the world because my writing is stalling out, and I’m no closer to reaching my goals, I realize that rage is the exact emotion that is missing from my final scene.

Sometimes I feel like I lose my way, but the truth is, I’m walking the writing path every minute of every day. Even when there are these spells of seeming dryness. I’m really just one of those toads who lives in the desert. They bury themselves, sometimes for months at a time. They just sit there and sit there, existing. Waiting. Then it rains and they emerge. They splash and drink and eat and sing and well… you know. They party until the rains stop and the desert dries up. Then they burrow back down into the dark to wait.

So, I’m a toad.

Except for one huge difference. When I’m in the dark, I’m never waiting. I’m dreaming and plotting and planning exactly what’s going to happen when I finally do reach the world up above.

Posted in SCBWI, Writing

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