I really needed to blog this week—there’s been a lot going on—but something was wrong with the server and I couldn’t access my website. Now I’m here and I’m tired…missed the garden on Tuesday and planned to go today but then fell asleep on the couch and woke up at 4pm realizing I hadn’t eaten lunch yet. It’s been raining off and on all week, which means the view from my window is very green—but the temperatures dropped suddenly so I’m wearing polar fleece and even got the space heater out of the closet. This is the sort of weather we used to hope for as teens because we wanted to wear our new fall clothes on the first day of school and it usually still felt like summer. It’s hot in California and I unexpectedly found myself writing about the redwoods as I finished up my acknowledgements for American Phoenix. It feels like the entire west coast is on fire and I’m worried about my friends who live there, especially those with respiratory conditions. Many of us assumed the redwood forests would be destroyed but apparently the ancient trees are scarred but still standing, and the ones that did fall will eventually decompose and help with regrowth. Redwoods are built to be resilient, which is why they can live for over a thousand years. That gives me hope.

On Tuesday I turned in my poems for Moonwalking and that same day I got feedback from my freelance editor about American Phoenix. I waited till Wednesday to look them over and was delighted to find that she really enjoyed reading many of the poems. One of her favorites was recently rejected by a literary journal and now I’m glad it will only appear in my book. My editor offered useful advice on how to “torque” a handful of weaker poems and today I sent the revised manuscript off to my designer. One of the poems from that collection, “Juneteenth,” I’ve decided to remove since my agent submitted it to some kid lit editors and three have expressed interest. We’re still waiting on a final offer from the film studio but in the meantime we got an improved offer from Random House for Book #3 and #4 in the dragon series. I have an appointment to talk to the theater producer next week; she asked to see some of my plays which sent me tumbling down the rabbit hole….in part because I couldn’t remember where I’d saved them on my computer and in part because the material felt so foreign to me. Some plays I remembered writing years ago but many I had completely forgotten about. My collected plays were among the first books I self-published back in 2008. I was using Lulu then and did my own formatting instead of hiring a book designer. I would write a play and enter a competition; that did result in three or four staged readings but then I got frustrated and moved on. I’m not big on team sports and theater is something that requires a team. And theater people are…different. Dramatic. The introvert/control freak in me decided it wasn’t my cup of tea. Have I changed since then? I think so. I still find collaboration challenging but I know now that the rewards sometimes make the irritation worthwhile.

I have an 8am workshop so I’d better go and prepare my slides. I used to hate making photocopies but now I miss the ease of distributing handouts! But I’m looking forward to writing with teachers—fantasy fiction and then poetry. If we accept the Random House offer, I’ll need to finish the next book by mid-November. Much as I love poetry, I’m ready to pivot back to prose. And maybe, before the year ends, I’ll try writing plays again…