Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Winter Unexpected

Not the weather . . . winter weather in Utah is just what it should be ('should' meaning within the parameters of normal behavior not 'should' as in morally right).

Remember how my last post claimed "I have absolutely no idea what's going to happen" this year? Witness January. Actually, witness the first 12 days of January.

Exhibit A: a four day trip to Klamath Falls, Oregon for my grandmother's 90th birthday. Didn't know I was doing that until a week before I went. I learned some interesting things on this trip. For instance, Oregon has some interesting choices in place names. Jumpoff Joe Creek, for one. Dead Indian Memorial Road, for another. (Aren't you just wondering now if the memorial is in honor of all Dead Indians, or one specific Indian? I've set my son to researching to assuage my curiosity.)

Exhibit B: for a year in which I did not plan to travel until an April trip to Japan, I will be getting on a second airplane before the end of January. This one's heading east, to another city with some interesting choices in . . . well, just about everything. That would be New York City for the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators conference. (I don't think I'm actually going to attend the conference--since I'm only marginally a YA author at best--but I'm flying with my dearest writer friend and we'll meet up with two more of our writer friends who live in Vermont and North Carolina. Hooray!) Plus I get to meet Tamar. I feel unbelievably sophisticated saying, "I'm going to meet my agent in New York.

I'd better get my hair colored.

Exhibit C: maybe there's not an exhibit C. Not yet. No doubt it's hovering just out of sight beyond the expected events of science fairs and spelling bees and high school theater auditions and college letters.

In the meantime, here's my writerly thought of the day:

So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say.
A Room of One's Own
Virginia Woolf

My addition: it won't matter for even a minute if it never gets written. And that's me off to revisions. Happy January!

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