Sometimes when you wake up in the morning you bounce out of bed and think ‘this is going to be a gloooorious day!’. The sun is shining, your tea is hot and perfectly sweet and spicy, your favourite shirt just came out of the dryer and it’s the perfect cool weather for your slippers to snuggle into.  And some morning you don’t want to get up because you have too much to do or you have a meeting that you don’t want to attend or even see a friend you are unsure about.  Or you wake up and have no idea what the day will be like.

It’s the same with writing.

I’m not talking about good days of writing or bad days of writing, I’m talking about a writer’s heart. Do you know that it is really hard doing this? I can’t even imagine what really good/selling well/multi-millionaire writers feel.  Some days I feel terribly unimportant in the writing world. That no one could be bothered to be excited that my new book is coming out, which in turn, makes me feel apathetic about my new book coming out. And some days I get an encouraging email saying, ‘this is awesome’ or ‘I’m so glad you’ve written another’ and ‘you can do it!’  I feel like I can do anything. I can write anything. And it will be awesome. I am awesome.

So I’ve decided that once a week, I am going to do a few things.

1) I will write a letter to encourage an author. The book I am reading, if I am loving it, I will hunt down the author’s webpage and email them, telling them I love their book, to keep it up, to be patient with themselves and kind to themselves as they write.

2) I am going to write a letter to a friend or a new friend or someone I just kinda know. I used to write encouraging letters all the time and I think I stopped because people stopped noticing. No thank you, no ‘wow I felt so awesome getting that in the mail!’.  And the purpose isn’t so I’d feel good, but so that they’d feel good. I need to start doing that again.

3) I’m stuck here. There needs to be a number three and I’m drawing a blank. Hm.  I’ll think of something.

And I will totally post the radio interview once I get it in my computer email. And figure out how.

Reading: Eden.  A 99cent buy on Kindle. Not bad.

Watching: He’s just not that into you.  I love stories where everyone’s lives connect somehow. Like Love Actually and Valentine’s Day.

Drinking: saigon chai tea!

Listening to: dogs barking.

If I could write in white today, I would.

The world is covered by thick white snow. It started snowing 5 hours ago and it hasn’t stopped yet. I’ve already dragged the gaffer out for a walk in it. Soft, swirling fluffy flakes landing on everything that stands still.  I love these days. The Christmas lights were turned on early (did I mention our tree has been up since November?) and it’s beautiful.

The gaffer is downstairs focusing on Christmas cards for his schoolmates. And I?

I am thinking of Amish Romance again.

I met an old school chum this week as she bought a couple of books and she’s terribly creative and gifted. And as we chatted, I mentionned the change of book audience and she was surprised. We discussed giving up one’s … creativity for the sake of money. Basically, ‘selling-out’.

I have so many ideas for so many different books. I have a picture book idea in mind and I also have the plot line of my amish one.  While I will accept that I was given a pretty good gift of writing, I have no problem writing books I don’t enjoy tremendously on a personal level, provided it brings in money.

Now don’t sound so shocked. My man works two jobs. I work none. Therefore, if I can make enough money that he only needs to work one? Then I’ve done my part. The end.

My greatest joy writing is poetry. And I can do that anywhere at anytime. It only takes five minutes to purge out something fantastic (my opinion anyway) once you have a delicious phrase. And a true joy would be to have my poetry bound properly. I’ve always wanted that. Maybe one day when I have nothing to do with my time and I have the debt thing sorted out. Then I”ll print all of it on yellow paper.

Listening to: Christmas carols and our neighbour chopping wood

Eating: gluten-free pumpkin scones (not bad)

Watching: the gorgeous snow fall

Reading: Desecration and Karen Kingsbury’s book um… something about a line. or something.

I mean, I don’t want to get into trouble for putting anything in that I shouldn’t (I always get into trouble for saying things I shouldn’t – note to self: build mouth filter system) and I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings.

But I’m also finding my webpage a tad boring. Should one be blogging about their everyday life whether monotonous or not, or should I be mentionning all the amazing recipes I try or things that catch my eye?

I want this page to appeal to kids who are old enough/young enough to read my books, but I also don’t want to dull the adults. Maybe I should figure out how to make a fun web-page where there are cool buttons and whatnot.

Problem is I have absolutely  no idea how to do that. Nor am I interested in figuring out how to do that. I mean, I’m the type of person who finally got her ITIN number and I still haven’t written it on the W-8 form and sent it to my publishers.

I know, I know.

Things are just too pretty. Or tiring. Or distracting. Or they are waiting to be read. Or I need to update my ipod because I need to go work out. Or something.

Today I woke up, took the kid to school, went to the gym, then met Lelu and Neecee for coffee at Starbucks. Lelu is going to Afghanistan on Monday. I just met her and she’s already become an amazing friend and now she’s leaving. That kind of breaks my heart. But Neecee has known her for much longer so she’s even more upset. Because Lelu is so freakin’ cool and sweet and she just invites you to let your guard down and be yourself. Gosh I’m going to miss that.

I might go to the Ottawa Writer’s Festival tomorrow night. Check some stuff out. There’s even a private party going on late at night which I’m invited to. How …. cool. Must practice being fabulous.

Muchness … I adore that word. It’s from Alice in Wonderland, of course. And we had just purchased the movie as I’ve seen it three times, so we had to buy it.  The scene where the Mad Hatter is talking to Alice, telling her that she has lost ‘much of her muchness’.

It’s so hard to describe ‘muchness’.  It’s not bravery, it’s not silliness, it’s not gumption. Well, not quite.

It’s … it’s…

For me, muchness is very personal.

It took muchness to travel to Guelph to a conference I knew nothing about, to talk to writers, publishers and agents I never heard of, to sell my book – nonaggressively. (is that a word?)  It took gumption to sit down with Andy Meisenheimer and dazzle him with my humour.

It took muchness to marry my soul mate. Not love. 

It took muchness to sell our beautiful home that Danny had built for us, so we could move into a small, crappy house we were renting so I could be a stay-at-home mom.

Where is your muchness? What have you done that is ‘muchworthy’?

I’m waiting for my shipment of pre-released books, which were supposed to be here, I think, last week.

I’m waiting for the release of Jackson Jones.

I’m waiting to be finished writing… no that didn’t sound right.

It’s summertime. Besides the obvious gardening, swimming, lounging, gardening, eating that happens in summer, there is also the fluff.

I don’t mean dandelion fluff. I mean chick lit fluff. 

Where you sit back in the sunshine with sunscreen on and you just read. And it makes no difference if you’re interrupted or if the book accidentally gets wet because it’s just chick lit fluff.

Oh, how I miss the fluff! I’ve tried reading Harper’s and Vogue and InStyle, but it is not scratching the itch.

While at Chapters today I noticed a ‘Buy three get one free’ sign. Oh how I longed to peruse the fluffy lit that called me in its soft voices. ‘Come read me! A novel about a divorced woman who is failing at her job and gets jam in her shoe and meets the CEO and he’s gorgeous but she can’t date him but then they fall in love and she quits to become an interior designer and they get married’.  Oh the temptation! It’s worse than tazo chais!

But I was good. I went straight to the kids section and picked out, ‘Robinson Crusoe’, ‘Journey to the Center of the Earth’, ‘Treasure Island’ and the ‘Benedict Society’.  See a theme?

Next book.

Listening to: hm…nothing?

Watching: SYTYCD

Reading: Alice in Wonderland

Eating: tonight? grande decaf soy no whip no drizzle caramel frappucino and sushi. but not together