As I prepare for a wonderful NYE celebration dinner with 12 even more wonderful friends, and a New Year’s Day of joyous celebrations at other wonderful friends’ homes, I am filled with a wonderful feeling: Damn, I won’t have any time to write for three days and I have to submit a completed manuscript Monday.

Last night I watched The Grand Budapest Hotel for inspiration as it is based on the writings of a wonderful author, Stefan Zweig. He had an incredible imagination which leads me to believe that he totally made up the name of his first wife, Friderike Maria Burger von Winternitz.

Had the chance to speak to a successful YA author yesterday. Wanted to know about his process. “How did you get the idea for this novel?” “I was asked to write it.” And he has a three book deal, and they’re making a movie out of it. What a great idea! That’s what I’m going to do next, after my first novel 1. Finds and agent. 2. Finds a publisher and 3. Makes the NYT Best Seller list.

The premise of Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children is SPOILER ALERT that a bunch of kids, each with a strange special power, may team up and save the world. The premise of next book I read, Shatter, SPOILER ALERT: is that a bunch of people, each with a strange special power, can team up and save the world. I thought, “I should introduce these two authors. They might like each other.” Ha ha ha ha. They’re already married.

*Do not add ‘instead of a writer.’ It will make me sad.

Two days ago I read a a YA romance novel. “I can right better than that,” I said to myself, feeling very happy, as the author has sold 7,000,000 books (no, honestly). Then I started reading Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. I could never write better than that. I am sad again.

I’m in print, on paper, in a literary review that I can actually set out on my coffee table, where, if anyone spills something on it, I will kill them.*

*Not literally, you silly. I am a veritable Ghandi. Also I couldn’t win an arm wrestling match with a 4 year-old.

This is what happens when you decide you want to spend your creative energy on writing, not acting/directing. A client books a program that is going to require tons of creative energy and someone from Marriott hands you a card and says his boss would like the troupe to join forces with them in some yet unknown, but undoubtedly creative energy-demanding, project. The only way to deal with this is to decide to focus on acting/directing, and then… I know. It doesn’t work that way.

So I’ve started book 3 in The Raven Cycle. I am sorry to report that it’s every bit as interesting as the first two, and I was devastated to discover that the author is roughly half my age. However, this could explain why she has so much imagination left. There. Now I feel much better.

I finished the second book in the Raven Cycle in one day. ONE DAY. There are so many really, really original twists and turns that I would have used up all my imagination (as in forever) by the end of that one. So maybe the third book will be normal and dull. It would make me feel so much better, except for the part about paying $16 for it.

I just finished reading The Raven Boys, the first book in a cycle called The Raven Cycle, and I’ve ordered the second book, because I believe it is essential that I understand the ‘YA cycle’ concept. Ok, that is a total lie. I’m reading it because I want to find out what happens next. There is at least one more book (#3) in the cycle and it won’t be out until tomorrow and then only in hardcover. As I tend to read books I enjoy in 1-2 days I hope there aren’t, say, 30 more books in the cycle since I can’t find my library card.