Serendipity

This is one of the paintings from the Kasisi Children's Home in Zambia that was auctioned off last night at The Philoctetes Center. By the way, I chickened out and didn't go. Seriously my roots were that bad, and I realized that I'd forgotten to put on deodorant. There was no way I could go looking like that, particularly if it turned out that cutie pie author's girlfriend was around.

Now I feel bad, so I'll be writing a check to the home tomorrow. See, I knew that even though I couldn't afford to bid on anything, I would have anyway. And then I would have probably ended up buying a painting that I couldn't afford and eating ramen for a month. I can't take all that MSG people.

Today, I had lunch with lovely agent, who I hope to work with. I must have been out of my mind because I pitched a book that I had just come up with on my walk to the restaurant. Actually, I came up with the idea on the way to the Post Officer earlier, but I fleshed it out on my walk to the restaurant. Fortunately her eyes lit up and now I have two months to work up the synopsis and the first three chapters.

Have you ever had the experience where all the links in the chain come into place. I had bought a book at the Chicago Historical Society just on a whim back in May, not knowing that book would come in handy now as research. And then like two months ago, I found another book quite by accident that works for my research. So clearly this is a book that I'm meant to write. Plus it scares me which is another sign.

She said something interesting to me during the course of our lunch, that she had felt when she read my last proposal that it felt kind of like I was writing what I thought an editor wanted, instead of what was coming from my heart. Which now that I think about it is kind of true. The first version of Crazy Little Thing Called Love was like Gossip Girl lite but with less creativity.

The two times that I've tried to write a YA that was outside of the box, I froze, because I was too worried about what an editor would think of it. I choked and abandoned the books after the partial. This time, I'm going full throttle. I know that I can write this book, I know that it has a great high concept, I just need to buckle down and do it in two months.

No pressure!

Thanks for reading,

EKM