WILD WONDERFUL WEEKEND

There is so much I want to say about the weekend I just had, but I have a feeling that my words are too content and tired, like I am...

FRIDAY: I went into New York City to spend the afternoon with the one and only Laini, my first ever Internet-to-real-life meeting. We went to a wonderful organic veggie restaurant and over lunch started talking about words in one great gulp. After we ate, we wandered around the Chelsea neighborhood and eventually stumbled into a cafe for more conversation about writing, dreams, and life in general. When we said goodbye, I walked away convinced that Laini should start charging blocked and frazzled writers for chunks of time with her as cheerleader and guide. The enthusiasm she shows on her blog radiates out into life and left me feeling encouraged and inspired. Petunia and I cannot wait for her upcoming book release.





The other draw to NYC Friday was a meeting I had with a literary agent, which has given me forward momentum with my first project and increased the urgency of completing the second one. I don't know if she will ultimately end up representing me or not--but the interest she showed was another inoculation against creative self-doubt.





SATURDAY: As if that wasn't enough goodness to keep my spark going for a while, on Saturday M. and I went to see Sam Beam perform at a rural Pennsylvania college. This was one of the holiday gifts he gave to me (it was a very good year)--a night with Iron&Wine and time as a couple without three (beautiful!) children. I wrote at length here about what this music means to me, and I just cannot do the show justice in a brief paragraph here. The venue was intimate and Sam actually talked during the show about his new baby coming and the release of a fresh batch of songs in the Fall. He played many of them Saturday night--and they are every bit as luminescent and powerful as his music always is. I think every now and then, you discover an artist (whether visual, literary, or musical) who so articulates your inner landscape that it becomes what you wanted to say, what you needed to hear. Discovering the comfort of his song at the time in my life when I did only deepens it for me. I am--still--in awe.





SUNDAY: M. slept in and I wrote the morning away before we bundled off to lunch and the drive back home to our house full of little ones. The contrast between the Friday traffic going into the Lincoln Tunnel in NYC to Sunday's in Amish country gives a clear sense of the whirlwind of a weekend.





Now, I'm sinking deep into my writing projects (trying to finish the second one by April in my own little solitary sort of NaNoWriMo)...grateful for the view from the road I am traveling on...