So, yes, two posts in a month, I must be feeling creative. Do you remember way back on Nov 1st when I said I was doing the NANOWRIMO? Well...it's stopped. I realized unlike many fabulous writers I am unable to write several genres at the same time. It's all or nothing and right now I am completely submerged in DAWN IN THE HIDDEN GARDEN (new title!).
I spent the whole weekend writing in Tahoe, with some fabulous writers, Anne Reilly, Lynn Hazen , Ellen Yeomans , and Connie Goldsmith , as guests of the lovely (and multi-talented - you should taste her cocktails!) Pam Turner. A blissful weekend given over to writing walking and critiquing, meeting new people and exchanging ideas.
I feel totally renewed and invigorated. Those amazing peeps were able to push me to new heights, which is what good critiquing is all about!
Now every time I try to think of something else, little poems sneak up on me, or I find myself looking very carefully at nature. Even walking or running I'll see something and think ah ha! Like this morning while running I saw a squirrel which darted up the tree running in spirals and I thought - ha- it skitters not scrabbles, and I'm running around the sports park making up the haiku in my head counting off the syllables with my fingers looking remarkably similar to a first grader doing math!
Later today while trying to fix an elusive worm haiku, I did some garden chores, I know yawn, yawn. I unfolded this piece of blue plastic that we use when we spray paint things - mostly silver, you know usual stuff - but then as it came undone a HUGE lizard darted out, freaking me and Mimi - me because no one expects a 12 inch lizard to be hiding in a tarp, Mimi because it was an animal running at her! It was seriously gorgeous and easily eluded Mimi's feeble huntress efforts as it darted for the rosemary bush.
So, of course there will be a lizard haiku now! The only worry I have about all this rhyme obsession is how much I enjoy it and how the YA I'm working on is disappearing into the background of my mind like a mist covered shadow.
What am I reading? 1Q84, Fracture, The Scorpio Races , Why we Broke Up and Across the Universe . I just finished Blue Fish with Luka - AM- AZ - ING!!!! So sparse and true,
to me a definite Newbery contender up there with A Monster Calls.
And that is all!
Later gator!
