Getting Back to Work

Okay, I can't say I've been very successful at this today. I met a friend for lunch in Beverly Hills and that took a chunk out of the middle of my day (even though I hadn't seen her for a while and we had a good time catching up--and I spotted Stephen Macht). I added a few more lines to my current chapter this morning, and was going to work some more when I got home this afternoon, but I had a bit of a fuzzy obstacle when one of our cats decided to lie on the desk between me and the keyboard. Just put him on the floor, you say? He's like a paddleball--he just comes right back. Shut the door, you say? Shutting a door in our house instantly invites all of our cats to stand outside it like they're in line for a new club opening. And one of them likes to stick her paws underneath the door as if she'll somehow be able to reach the doorknob. So I went into the other room, cat followed, then I went back to the office--and he didn't. Hooray, I could get back to work.

Nope.

Not the cats' fault this time. Mine, all mine. I went to the SCBWI Westside Schmooze last night, where we talked a lot about blogs. Now, I already have several bookmarked, many of which I read semi-regularly, and some occasionally. Well, now I somehow decided it would be a great idea to think of authors I've read lately whose books I really liked, and see if each of them has a blog. Not a quick task. Fun, but not quick. I found that Judy Blume even has a blog. In fact, Judy Blume having a blog on Blogger.com is in part what led me to do a blog here as opposed to some other sites. I thought, if it's good enough for the godmother of YA novels, then it's good enough for me. That was something that came up at the Schmooze--all the different blog hosting sites. It seemed that at conferences and stuff I've heard a lot of people talk about their "LJ names," so I thought LiveJournal would be the way to go, even though I preferred the layout of Blogger. Last night, though, it seemed like more people had blogs on Blogger. Then I started feeling like I did in middle school when I needed new sneakers. I'd always had Keds or Adidas, but in middle school, THE sneakers to have were Tretorns, a preppy tennis shoe (even if you didn't play tennis). So, buying Tretorns was a no-brainer--the biggest decision was what color triangle to get on the side (I was a semi-rebel by getting green when most people had red or blue). Now, is anyone going to think more or less of me because of the blog host I have? No, of course not. But I decided to embrace the feeling that it did matter, because that helps me remember what it felt like when I was thirteen and everything was an important (social) life-or-death decision.


So, I didn't get any more work done on my manuscript today, but I don't feel like the day was frittered away. I did get a bit done this morning, and I immersed myself in reading blogs and feeling connected to other writers, which is encouraging to me (children's authors can be some cool people!). Tomorrow I will try a new experiment with my manuscript in relation to my blog--we'll see if it works...