"So, what are you doing this summer?"

This is a question every teacher is asked every year. Here's my answer:

Summer is a busy, busy, busy time of year for me. As the school year ends and the summer begins, the days and nights are filled with ceremonies, celebrations, and obligations. At that time of year, teachers attend enough meetings and classes to numb even the strongest...posteriors.

Now that school's finally out, my mom has monopolized my time with all of the little errands that have needed done since Spring Break, but that "will wait until school's out...*sigh.*" (In order for that last line to work, you have to feature my 70-something mom with the back of her hand to her forehead. Got it? Good. Now re-read the line.)

Since the official last day of school on May 27, I've had four days of school-related meeting/work days and six Mom days. I've also had several "let's do lunch" engagements with my friends, who are dear enough and patient enough to understand that, during the school year, it's almost impossible for me to socialize and who allow me to play 'catch up' during the summer. They really are the greatest. A friend's health crisis has also eaten up quite a bit of time.


Also, I am checking my emails (a little too often) looking for a response from the agent who asked to read my completed novel. It's only been four weeks, so that's a little too soon to expect a response, but I still check daily. A story I co-wrote with the lovely and talented father-daughter team of Tom and Amanda Howard is slated to appear in an anthology which will be released this fall, and as it is a contest, we each get to vote on our favorite story in the book. So add "reading a galley proof" to the list of things to do. Plus I've written and posted a short story to a contest on Figment.com (a link: http://figment.com/books/89930-The-Collectors  BTW, if you read the story and like it, please click the little heart to vote for me. Thanks!) And I still need to write another short story for another contest.

So what am I doing this summer, you ask? The answer is "none of the above." The answer is "writing." And by writing, I mean writing my next novel. I'm trying to write every day. Not always as much as I want to. Not always as often as I'd planned. But my objective is to complete the new novel by mid-July. With the last project, I discovered something about myself as a writer: I get the best results with the "Write Now, Edit Later" philosophy espoused by the Chris Baty, founder of National Novel Writing Month.* And so I'm writing as fast as I can, with the goal of completing the new novel, a young adult gothic romance/ghost story, by July 15. I'll be submitting my first fifty pages--our page limit--to my writing group for our July meeting.

Happy Summer!



*For those of you who are aspiring writers and who need a little bit of a kick in the pants, I highly recommend NaNoWriMo as a means of receiving that boot to the keister. During the month of November, you and about a million of your closest friends and writing buddies each write 50,000 words--which is the length of a short novel. For more information or to sign up, go to www.nanowrimo.org.