Washington D.C., It’s Paradise to Me

(The header is from a Magnetic Fields song, by the way. Just to avoid any copyright infringement.)

Off to DC today. The land of delicious Afghan food, equally delicious Ethiopian food, the world’s best running path—at least, the most monument-filled running path—great bookstores, and, last but not least, our friend Adam’s wedding. It’s a direct two-hour flight, and I’ve decided to not even bring my computer. No work. (Well, if I want to cheat, I can always write longhand on my notepad.)

I like playing with young adult stories as a palate cleanser between adult novels. (Or, in this case, I’m still waiting for my last batch of edits for Ghosts Underground, so I don’t want to dive into revisions of my next adult novel…which has a finished first draft.) So I’ve been working on a middle-grade book about two 14-year-old girls who decide to run away from their miserable home lives and live on an abandoned golf course. It’s set in Birmingham, and it takes place almost in my backyard.

 Who knows if it’ll go anywhere. But I’m having fun at the moment. Most satisfyingly, I had 43 pages written as of last Friday, and today I have 75 pages written. I consider that an excellent few days of writing.  It’s earned me the right to take a break for the next few days and focus on making progress in Bleak House. I love it, but it’s just daunting to have read 200 pages in a book and feel like you’ve barely made a dent in it. I wish it came in two volumes, 500 pages each, just so I could avoid seeing the vast expanse of unread material every time I pick it up and put it down. I could hide the last 500 pages and feel pretty good about my progress so far.

Also, we’re throwing a Halloween party with the theme “Night of a Thousand Cliches. ” Everyone’s supposed to dress up as a cliche. I like the IDEA of this party immensely, but I have no idea what my costume will be yet. I’ve got to start picking themes AFTER I’ve come up with a good costume.