Once More Into the Breach

As always, when I come away from an alumnae brunch, I feel grateful to know so many bright people, and a little envious of how great everyone looks and how positive everyone sounds about what they’re doing and where they’re going. This time we celebrated MeiMei‘s scriptwriting promotion at OLTL and ABC, and then WriteGrrrl told us about the television pilot she’s writing with friends, IGG introduced us to her new little one, and Seren and Pari told us about doing The Artist’s Way, and how that’s been for them.

And all the while I’m thinking to myself how lucky we all are — even as we piss and moan about editing (yeah, yeah, I know I should be doing that right now) and complete laziness, and unlearning some of what we ingested in grad school, and being tired and taking home work on weekends, and not taking time to rest… even now, as we’re all on the bumpy part of our roads to success, we are all so lucky because we are doing what we want to do. Even as it hurts. Even as we have to throw out 684,456 pages of our last novel because we figure out they’re pure crappola right before our editor does; even as we carve out forty minutes a day to read something — anything — while we’re on the exercise bike we’ve been using as a clotheshanger; even as we’re coming home from work and putting the baby down for a nap, and trying to steal thirty minutes to write something that isn’t a grocery list… we are lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky.

And I will try to remember this.

Because, truthfully? Sometimes all I think of writing is that it’s a pain. Via Jen Robinson’s Book Page I found a funny, realistic post from Fred Charles’ site which tells The Truth About Writing. And it is true! Although writing is not really a hard job, per se, it really is a pain at times. But again, it’s a good pain… because this is the gamble I chose for right now. And as Seren said yesterday, “…it 100% for sure won’t happen if you don’t try.” And so I give a roll of the dice with nothing to lose… and keep on writing…

Ooh! The newest Edge of the Forest is up. In the YA section, new novels The Rules of Survival, by Nancy Werlin, Dial Books (to be released next month), Fringe Girl, by Valerie Frankel, NAL Trade, and Out of Patience, by Brian Meehl, Delacorte Press, are reviewed, and there’s more interesting stuff from other children’s lit writers in the blogosphere. Check it out.