Dear Alice,

Last night was the final author reading from the writing contest. I'm happy to say that I was not the youngest person there. And not by a long shot! The winner in the children's literature division was a 13-year-old girl! Her story was fabulous! There were also two other women who were younger than me - one in her late 20s and one in her mid to late 30s. The tone of the evening was much more positive than the last reading. Maybe it was the younger blood in the room. The depressing whale watching piece led off the readings as it had last time but was followed by the first and second place winners in the children's division. Following that was the sad story about the boy who was bitten by a dog but it fit in with the flow and wasn't overly depressing. The readings ended with the funny true story about the girl who cheated in the Easter egg hunt during the depression. The night was a balance of the sad and the humorous.

Six or seven of us had met for dinner before the reading and that was an enjoyable experience. It was really interesting to chat with the other writers. It turned out that the couple I sat across from new some friends of mine from church. I turned out to be one of those coincidental "You don't happen to know the one person I know from (fill in the blank) ?" and I did. I would have loved to stay to chat after the reading but it was 8:30p, and I had the ferry ride and hour drive back so I said a few goodbyes and made my way back to the ferry. It was a quick drive and I figured I wouldn't have to wait long. I was wrong. I'd arrived at the magic time when the ferry switched from the every-other-half-hour sailing schedule to the once an hour. I ended up sitting in my cold car until 9:30pm, no coffee machine available in the walk-on waiting room.

I did find one onboard the ferry and ran into two people from the reading. They'd enjoyed my story and were amazed at all the rhymes I'd come up with, figuring that I'd had to google search to make my connections. There were blow away when I told them the rhymes had just come to me.

I made it home in good time, what with the late hour keeping traffic off the freeway and having been one of the first people on, and therefore off, the ferry. This morning I was surprised to find that the end of the experience has lifted the barrier I've felt toward working on my current WIP. Just as with my first novel, I found myself pulling my notebook into bed with me and working on it before I got dressed or had coffee or anything else. It's a good sign.

Dear Alice,

So I did a reading with the other winners from the writing contest I finaled in. I was the youngest person there by a good 15 years. Other than the poetry everyone else read MUCH too long. We were suppose to keep it to no more than 8 minutes but I'm sure some were closer to 15 as I zoned out on most of them. I am amazed I even placed in this contest as so much of what won was terrible. I have no idea what they were looking for but apparently it was heavy, depressing stuff. The memoirs weren't bad but the essays and fiction were awful. On the other hand, I see this stuff populating the bookstore and library which may be why I've been sticking with Janet Evanovich lately. Even the other children's story was a global warming rip-off of The Night Before Christmas. I read half of mine and left them wanting more. I thought that not only would I keep them from being bored but maybe sell a few of the anthologies as well. Turns out, those have already sold out. I suppose that's a good thing, but I wish there were more floating around out there in the hopes than an agent or someone would have a good chance of stumbling across it and look me up. Sigh. I've still got one more reading scheduled but at least I know what to expect and can zone out from the beginning.

On the writing front, I've still been procrastinating my current WIP. I've got a few more scenes blocked out. I figured out Angela's playlist and have been listening to it which has helped tons. I'd probably be writing more if I didn't have Epic Mickey to distract me. And my thriller class 3rd project that keeps creeping into my thoughts when I'm doing things like taking a shower. I seem to do a lot of blocking in there for some reason. Then I have to jump out and write down what I'm thinking about before it slips away. I've decided that procrastination isn't all that bad as it took me years to write my first two completed works. But I'd feel guilty spending all that money on New York and then not have anything to show my husband for it.

I'm going to continue to procrastinate tonight, even though I'm the only one home, and do something more constructive - like finally watch Vanity Fair (I bought it about nine months ago and it still has the wrapper on it). Nah. I'm off to fight Splatters on Skull Island. What can I say? I'm addicted.

Dear Alice,

New year, new stuff.

My trip to New York was good. My three days there flew by quickly. We had heavy snow on Friday which made our lunch at the Boathouse very beautiful. Can't beat watching it snow in Central Park while eating great food and drinking fabulous wine! Saturday we met up with a friend of my niece at a diner near NYU and then spent the rest of the day wandering the Chelsea neighborhood. I got a good feeling of the neighborhood but now am wishing I'd spent a week puttering around there and now just the small amount of time I did. Sunday we slept in and then went to a matinee of The Addams Family. Times Square was amazing and we wandered into a French restaurant for dinner.

I haven't written much since I got home, just about a page. I had surgery the day after I got back from NY and have been pretty tired. On the other hand, I've gotten a lot of good thinking done and the story should start to take off once I actually sit down and get into it. Tomorrow I have the first of the two readings I'm doing with the winners of the writing contest. I've never done anything like this before so it should be interesting.

Over the last couple of weeks, I've looked back and compared where I was professionally last year compared with now. Last year, I had a nearly completed first manuscript and was excited about where that was going. I'd begun plotting the sequel and had started thinking about finding an agent. This year, I've edited that manuscript more times than I can count and am STILL waiting for my beta readers to provide me with feedback on my heavily revised Chapter 1. Maybe I need to find an actual editing group. I completed my children's story after having worked on it off and on for the last 5 years and it won a prize in a writing contest. I took 3 classes on how to write a query letter and two on how to write a synopsis. I queried more than 50 agents on my first manuscript and around 20 on my children's story. I joined two writer's associations, attended their conventions, and have taken classes. I did an online convention and took a writing class from the guy I sat next to at the June convention (who gave me the idea for my current WIP). Because of him, I now have a stash of story ideas where last year I had only the sequel and my two children's books. (One got written last year, one I'm still blocking.)

I'm feeling more like a writer this year but in some ways I'm more discouraged as every career I pick ends up getting rid of people just as I am ready to walk through the door. I know amazing writers out there that just can't seem to get either a) an agent or b) an agent that's made a sale. My goal this year is to accept that I may just be stuck (yes, stuck) being a housewife who dabbles in teaching and writing but has no true place she belongs (I kind of suck at being a housewife). My epitaph would read something like, "She had good intentions but never excelled." Sad.