Many of you may already be aware via Twitter or Facebook that I lost my brother last week.  His death was unexpected, he was only 36, and he left behind three young children.  I am coping with this loss as best as I can right now.  My friends and family are invaluable support, and I work through a lot with writing too, of course.  I do hope to get back into a regular routine soon, but if I remain quiet on here a little longer, I wanted to let you all know why.  Thanks for your understanding.

-Di

I've been a little quiet the last couple of weeks and I apologize.  But I've had a very good reason.  I've been very focused on my YA novel and. . . I. . . have. . . FINISHED.  I have reached the end.  It felt great.  Naturally the revising adventure is next, but I like that phase. . . well, most of the time. . . because I start out by doing my edits by hand, which means I print out my manuscript and put it in a big binder and lug it around with me admiring how many pages I wrote. I frequently show it off to people who always act impressed when I say, "I wrote this!"  Of course they are just seeing the sheer number of pages and not the words inside. 

Never mind that many of those pages are crap and I am going to go back and re-read some of the earlier chapters and realize that I completely changed things by the end. I may run into characters I've forgotten about, or who are so flat I fall asleep reading about them. There will be typos and plot holes and a lack of setting, conflicting descriptions. . . I can go on and on.  But every time I get discouraged, all I have to do is sit back and look at that huge binder full of all those words that I wrote and I will be happy and proud. I will focus on the quantity while I turn it into quality.

So what have you guys been up to lately? 

Happy Writing!

Di