Another Action Agenda.

I need to get organized. Ha ha!

I need to be working on Leavetaking. I did a little work on it yesterday, at least, but I feel that I have got to rewrite every scene from the ground up, when I probably don’t have to. But when I say “I probably don’t have to,” I wonder if I’m just being a lazy bum who doesn’t want to improve her damn novel. Don’t mind me, I’m just being neurotic.

I also need to be filling out an application and writing essays for an English teaching position here at the local schools.

I should type up my essays this afternoon. Why should a writer be so scared of essays? Because I’m chicken, that’s why. I’m shooting for a job that I could do (I know all the English stuff you’d ever need to have stuffed into your head, and I can handle a room of rowdy high schoolers who don’t want to be there) but that I don’t have certification for, so I could be the front runner only to have somebody with fewer skills walk in with a teacher’s certification and walk out with my job. Just the way it happened last time.

And I need to get my pitches ready for the big MWG conference that’s coming up. I have a 90-second pitch that I need to do. I have three excerpts from two different novels and I need to choose one – and I need to hurry so I can practice it. Choose, but choose wisely! And then I need to get my five-minute pitch ready for my face-to-face meeting with my agent (okay, she ain’t my agent yet), and fix up my homework for the Sunday master class. Amongst other things. I want to choose the bestest outfits to wear so I just stun the bejesus out of the participants. I also need to fix up 18-20 centerpieces for 18-20 tables. But my mother-in-law and I are going to do that together, thank goodness!

And I need to write a gardening column by tonight. As usual, I’m not sure what it’s going to be about. Something about spring planting. Maybe lawn care. Speaking of that, we need to get the lawnmower fixed. But not today.

And I read little scraps of the Iliad when I find time. Got to a good part, when Zeus goes up on Ida, gets out the little scale and weighs the fate of the Acheans and the Trojans, and then whips a major thunderbolt across the sky and scares the hell out of the Acheans. I'm not doing justice to the scene. Arrgh.

Gotta take the kid outside today, because it’s so nice out. Maybe I could work on some of the pitches at the playground.

Also gotta make lunch.

One thing at a time, woman! Let’s get lunch going.

On the I-Pod right now:

“Illegal Smile” by John Prine. Well done. Hot dog bun. My sister’s a nun.

Then the Judas Priest version of “Johnny Be Good.”