I decided to leave my phone at home while I wrote today. I’ve gotten so much more accomplished today, I’m going to do this on a regular basis.*

*As in “when I forget to take my phone.” Because that’s what actually happened today. However, I did get a lot more accomplished.

I heard Nelson DeMille speak Sunday at Politics and Prose, our spectacular independent bookstore* I was thrilled to learn that his writing process is the same as mine, except for the part that he’s sold millions of books, and I don’t have an agent yet.

 

*If you visit DC, you must go there, or, as Shaw said, “The angels will weep for you.”

You know it’s a bug. I know it’s a bug. EVERYBODY KNOWS IT’S A BUG. Except the Apple tech support guy. He must be working from a manual entitled “Waste the maximum amount of time trying to supposedly help the pitiful helpless person on the other end by suggesting unnecessarily complicated processes e.g., making me go through 21 steps instead of “Open Utilities then click on terminals” and fixes absolutely nothing.

Then he gives me the wrong code for taking a screenshot (even I know it’s shift command 4) and tells me to right click on my trackpad. And the fact that hesd never heard of CommandW is not encouraging.

After over an hour of this brain melting session he lets me know he’s just contacted the developers and they’re “Aware of the problem and trying to fix it.” Shouldn’t that have been step #1?

There. I feel better now. Sort of.

My husband’s Fourth Symphony will be premiered and recorded at the Alba Festival in Alba Italy, June 2 and his American Symphony will be performed at Monticello (Jefferson’s home) sometime spring or summer 2018 and may be part of a PBS special.

I believe this absolutely requires me to publish a novel, right? Working on it.

Ok, this might not actually qualify, as I don’t remember the guy’s name, but Muhammad Ali’s business manager once defended my honor on a DC-bound Amtrak train. He also gave me Ali’s autographed pic. How do I know he was actually Ali’s business manager? He was working on his taxes.

 

Writing synopses kills my synapses.

 

*At least I can still rhyme

I’m going on a short vacation soon, and I said to myself, “Self, you should take a break from writing while you’re away. You’ll be revived and refreshed when you return. Your creative juices will flow again.”

As usual, this a complete lie of heroic proportions. I’m taking a break because all I’m doing now is querying, a process so horrendous I would use any excuse not to have to write another synopsis. This would include the ever reliable, “My grandma died.” She would be approximately 130 if she hadn’t died, so of course she died…just not recently.

1. I got 3 “likes” in yesterday’s Pitmad extravaganza. For the uninitiated, this is a quarterly, or possibly biennial, or once in a century* Twitter event. You get to tweet a 140-character description of your book.** If an agent or editor is interested in seeing a few thousand more characters, you get one of those tiny hearts by your tweet.

I pitched 4 projects and two got requests. I must confess I was feeling a little like the joke about the mother who buys her son two ties. He comes to breakfast wearing one, and she says, “What’s the matter? You didn’t like the other one?”

2. Someone from South Africa visited my blog. Probably an accident.

*I’m too lazy to look it up.

**Which is expected to be a lot longer than 140 characters

So I’ve finished the first draft of my MG mystery ( hey, I’ve tried every other genre except  dystopian cookbooks). The continuity issues of the day/time variety are so aggravating, I’m thinking of inventing new days of the week* so I can insert one, as needed.

*How do we feel about Cheaterday and Fudge-it-day?