Incidentals

Hi friends.

It only just occurred to me I was having one of the longest years of my life when I saw that I had eight events left to do in the next month, and I let out a sigh that came from nowhere I recognized, as if some new, crackly level of exhaustion had been unlocked. I love to do these events. I love to see everyone. The tiring part is the coming and going and packing and unpacking and “now boarding” and “prepare for landing” and “can I have a credit card, it’s just for incidentals.” The things that make a business trip feel like business.

This is why we buy candy at the airport, I reminded myself. This is why we have a nice glass of wine at the end of the day.

Anyway, come see me in Pass Christian, Gainesville, St. Pete, Venice, Chicago and Austin. We can shake hands and exchange good ideas.

In lieu of getting work done on my novel this week—beyond a few sentences here and there—because my brain continues to be inflamed by the publishing process, I was thinking of all of you instead. I wanted to develop a list of writing prompts to share in the future. Then I realized all my suggestions end up sounding like “remove yourself from the situation” or “bend at the waist” or “are you getting enough iron.”

Still these didn’t sound like terrible ideas, or at least they made sense to me. I decided to try one out this morning. It only took fifteen minutes and I did feel like I got somewhere new. What I did was this: