Blog Entry: Weekend, dragons, and jacket photos
Thanks so much for all the anniversary wishes! They meant a lot to me and to Patrick.
It was a really, really good weekend. On Saturday night, we ate takeaway curries and drank anniversary champagne, and then we had a laid-back family Sunday with MrD, just hanging out in the back yard and at the local park. It was lovely and fun and incredibly relaxing to spend the whole day as a family - it can be too easy to fall into the habit of switching off childcare duties so that one of us is always alone Being Productive and Getting Stuff Done.
Yesterday, for once, we remembered that it was a Sunday, and that sometimes being productive is a lot less important than having a really good time as a whole family, together.
And then today, for the first time in almost five months, I sat down and read through the 11,000 words I'd written this spring of my Austen-y dragon novel! I was really nervous after all the time off. I'd loved it so much, I'd been having so much fun...would I be disappointed when I actually read what I had written back in March?
I was in love all over again within the first three pages, buzzing with inspiration and joy. I love, love, love playing in this world, with these characters. It's funny, I first had the idea for the concept of this book about five years ago, but it never went anywhere beyond the first line. Then I remembered it two years ago, wrote the first page and a half...but it still didn't work. I was stuck on concept and style without any real characters, which SO doesn't work for me. Finally, finally, this March, the characters slipped into my head, I threw away those first couple of pages and started over again from scratch...and here we are, with a real book on the way.
It's been a long, long time from first concept to realization, but I'm really, really happy to be here now. And another awesome thing arrived today: my American jacket proofs for Kat, Incorrigible! Once again, I've co-opted Carrie Jones's Need from my bookshelf, because it has exactly the right page count and size to fit my cover. Sadly, I couldn't find our digital camera (MUST find it before Thursday's launch party!), but PhotoBooth came to the rescue:
Days like this are just...well, I'm really, really thankful and aware of my good luck today.
Can anyone point me toward some good dragon-themed desktop wallpaper? Or alternately: what's the longest you've ever taken between starting a project and figuring out what it really wanted to be all along?