Writing in the Midst of Much To Do

I forgot today is my day to blog. I've been checking my phone every morning for the day of the week. Then I check my appointment book. I'm still old-school with that. A book that I can open and flip through the pages.

This morning, I forgot I was blogging today because I didn't have time to check my calendar. I had an appointment to take Harry, my cat, to the vet. One of his eyes has been watering, but it was looking better. I almost canceled, but then I would have felt guilty if later it turned out to be something painful or serious. He dashed toward the bed when he heard me bringing in his crate, I lured him out by spraying the bathroom with Clorox. Don't ask me why, but he loves the smell of it. He trotted right into the bathroom and started to sniff and looked ready to hop into the wet bathtub. I shut the door and dashed for his crate before he suffered lung damage. 

He was not happy when I opened the door again and scooped him up for that hated trip in the car that always winds up on the table being poked and prodded. But today, he only got his nails clipped, eye drops, and treats with nutrients for vision. He was happy to have lunch and go out on the enclosed porch to turn paws up in the sun. I had to go back out to do errands before I could go to office. 

Now, it's the end of the day and I am going home to settle down to writing. I believe more and more that I should go back to the way I used to write. Log off the email, ignore the news alerts popping up, and settle in for five hours of uninterrupted time at the keyboard. This week, I made numerous notes to myself about both my historical thriller and my two non-fiction projects. The time I wasn't writing actually proved useful because in one of those marvelous examples of serendipity (I love that word), I happened across articles relevant to all three projects. 

With the 1939 thriller, I accidentally ended up on a Yahoo page devoted to interesting news stories. One of them was about a man who had bought a dresser at an auction and discovered a secret drawer. Then I was re-reading Agatha Christie's Death on the Nile because it was published in the United States in 1938, and one of my characters in my 1939 thriller will have read it. As I was reading I came across several lovely references to clothing that I want to quote in my non-fiction book about dress and appearance in American crime and justice (because, of course, Americans were reading Christie in real life). I also stumbled across a quote in a newspaper article about a real life gangster that will work well in my book about gangster movies. So my time was not wasted. I now have a frame story for the events in the historical thriller and several useful quotes for the other two books. 

Today the sun was shining. That was good. It was even better when I heard from one of our SinC chapter members that we have only 23 seats left for the second day of our Murderous March conference (March 20-21). That's good news because it means that with the Saturday portion of the conference still a month away, the library that we are partnering with for the third year is already near 80 person capacity. But we have lots of space at the hotel where we have a block of rooms so we can accommodate any of those people who decide to attend the Friday afternoon workshops with Sujata Massey and Alison Gaylin and the buffet dinner that evening. I think it also means that the people who attended last year's conference are excited about the third year of what is now an annual conference. This year, we are being joined by authors from MWA-NY. I'm among those upstate members who can rarely make it down to the City for chapter meetings, so I'm happy that they're coming upstate. We are also going to have authors from New England and the SinC Murder on Ice chapter in western New York. For the first time, we'll have a Pathways to Publishing panel with industry professionals. With luck we won't have a blizzard that weekend. 

Tonight, I am going to turn off all my distractions and settle down to write. That's also how I'm going to spend the weekend. Even with the notes I've jolted down, I need to get back to work.