Laura

Thanks for the cheers – really! That helps.

This afghan has had a life of its own and it’s sucking the life out of me. The worse part is that it’s knitting I generally have to think about. I have to make sure I’m following the pattern fairly closely or I tend to make mistakes. And mistakes aren’t that great, right?

So what happens is this – I work on the afghan for a few days, weeks, months. I’m diligent – knitting every day.

Then – it’s time to make xmas gifts or I get frustrated or bored or something – and I drop the afghan project and I take up another project.

And I do this a lot. Which is why I’ve been working on this afghan I think for about 10 years. No effing joke.

Current diversion – sweet little dress for my 6 month old granddaughter. I love this because it’s got a lot of mindless knitting in it. LOVE mindless knitting. Great paired with TV or movies.

Anyway – I really will be on the afghan once the dress is complete and I’m halfway there. Nice thing about baby stuff – they knit up rather quickly. Unless you’re using size 2 needles (which I am – but still, the items are small and knit up pretty quickly).

New Orleans is more expensive than I thought it would be. Okay, that’s not a big revelation.

But we’re here and haven’t had a vacay in a long time, so here I sit, not buying a ticket for something, or buying a bunch of something I don’t need. I’m sitting and writing this in a starbucks.

Heck, I could be home doing that.

It’s my way of not spending money – doing stuff here I could be doing at home. (empty laughter ensues).

Gotta think of something better than that, girlfriend.

I did it in 2011. I may never do it again (I don’t know). Mostly I tried to write everyday, but expected there would be a few days when I wouldn’t get to writing (uh . . . Thanksgiving being one). So I tried to bang out a minimum of 2500 words a day when I did write, and if the spirit moved, I went beyond this sortof goal.

I found it best to be in a place with people in it – a cafe or starbucks – and I always, always, always had headphones with music, mostly just stuff from my ipod, so very eclectic. This combo, being nearby people but not exactly interacting, along with the music, put me in a great writing zone, where I stayed for the month. It was a great zone, but I was VERY glad when it was over. I ended up at 54K with about a day to spare. Now on to editing . . . which I haven’t even started 10 months later.

Before I got started, I wrote a very sketchy outline which helped me jump around if I was feeling stuck in one area of the writing. If I felt even more stuck, I wrote “character outlines” for various people – sometimes in first person and sometimes in third person to mix it up.