Holiday Weekend

What I dreaded as a long empty holiday weekend has turned busy. Today, Bino from the Star Cafe came and cleaned out my flower beds--he used to work for a landscaper. He carried away bags and bags of weeds and dead leaves, and he split my iris, which badly needed it. While he worked, Betty and I went to brunch, and then I came home to cook dinner for Jeannie (and kept some for myself).

I've also been reading lots of emails from Sisters-in-Crime and subgroups, like Senior Sleuths. I joined the Guppies group--Great Unpublished authors--where I reside with mixed feelings. I'm not unpublished, but I am in as a mystery writer. And I'm finding mystery writing is 70% promotion and 30% writing, if I'm to believe the emails I read. You can spend a full day following up on the emails and never have to put another word on the computer screen.

Yet the process of writing is going well. I'm into the second chapter of the second novel and have some ideas I like about where it will unfold--ideas that will I hope surprise a reader. I feel sort of --well, silly, maybe presumptuous writing a second novel when the first is unpublished (I never ever did that in the days of historical fiction) but on the other hand if I'm not confident about my writing, nothing will come of it (yes, Jamie, I hear you).

And I haven't once, as I feared, thought "Yikes! What am I going to do with the rest of the day?" Saturday night Jan said it didn't bother her if she didn't have anything to do. Charles and I both agreed we like to keep busy, and he said, "I'm good at manufacturing things if I don't have anything to do" Oh boy, is that me! Once again this morning I woke up with a head full of things I "should" do--laundry, cooking, linger over the paper (notice how I fit an unnecessary but pleasureable activity into a list of chores!) and I almost bounded out of bed. But I didn't.