early in the morning

Two things.

1) I'm not learning enough about How-to-BLOG from the 23 things we librarians have to do, so I've put several blogging instruction books on hold. They should be on my desk by Tuesday and then maybe I'll figure this stuff out.

2) I've begun a strange habit for my writing. I sleep for 4 hours or so -- then wake up and can't get back to sleep -- so I fire up my computer and work on writing. My project this week has been to slash and burn a 4600 word manuscript -- cut it in half. or more. I originally had intended it to be another 48 page picture book biography, like TO FLY. (see the bookcover at the right over there? that one.) But it keeps being rejected. One editor was kind enough to tell me that they only do 32 page books, not 48 pages.

Wondering if it was being rejected because something was wrong with the writing, I got it critiqued by an editor at a SCBWI conference. She was very nice about it. Said the writing was well-written. (yea!) But, even if TO FLY was 48 pages, she didn't think anyone was doing books that length anymore. Her advice was either to lengthen it and illustrate it with photographs and documents -- or shorten it to better fit the picture book length.

I assured her that I had already done the photo research for this and there was very little out there -- it really needed to be illustrated by an artist.

Therefore -- on the advice of two good editors -- I'm slashing and burning.

3) This writing in the wee hours of the night means that I'm a teeny tiny bit tired for my day job. (yes I do go back to bed and get a few more hours of sleep.) So far, bottled tea has kept me going.

-w