So You Asked a Writer When Their Book Comes Out...

…and they sent you to this post.

First of all, I think it’s cool that you’re supportive and showing interest in your friend or family member’s writing. That’s nice of you! Second of all, this post is not a comprehensive breakdown or a universal explanation of any part of the writing process, it’s just my experience of querying a novel so far.

So! Your friend is trying to get a literary agent and you’re wondering when they’ll have news about their book!

Your friend doesn’t know. No one knows. It’s a mystery. They can’t even give you a ballpark. There are no timelines.

The first step of querying is…well, okay, the first step of querying comes after a lot of hard work already that only started with writing the book. But for the purposes of this blog post, querying starts after researching the best literary agents for the book (which is more tricky than it sounds but we’re skipping straight to actually beginning to query, here).

Your writer friend first has to send a query letter to an agent. (This is not a how-to post to guide anyone in writing a good query letter. This is a very tongue in cheek approach. Please, writers who stumbled on this post instead of friends-of-writers who were sent here, please don’t try to use this as a guide to write a good query letter.)
The query letter basically says,

”Dear Agent,

I’m looking for someone to represent my book, and I have read that you like books with these things in them. My book has these things!

Here is my attempt to write a back-of-the-book style blurb about my manuscript, please be intrigued.

Here is some information about me, please like me.

Thank you!
Tired Author”

What goes along with that query letter is determined by what the agency requests and it’s different every time. Some of them want a synopsis (summarize the entire, whole novel in usually one page—without missing any major plot elements but also without sounding like a dry summary but also without going on for too long…). Almost all of them want a small sample of your writing. This can be the first five pages, the first ten pages, the first chapter, the first three chapters, the first 10,000 words, or anything the agent decides to ask for in their guidelines. Only a few times have I run across an agency that asks for a query letter with no sample pages at all.

So your writer friend or family member sent that! That’s a huge step, they were very brave, they deserve some cookies or something!

Next they wait for a response. Agencies take submissions generally by email or by an online form (sometimes by snail mail but I have zero experience with that, so I won’t touch on it here). I prefer the forms, there’s almost no guesswork, and with a form submission I almost never run into one of my least favorite sentences in querying:
“Due to the volume of queries we receive, we unfortunately cannot respond to all queries.”

One reason your writer can’t answer the question of when they’ll know more about the book they’re querying is because they don’t always know whether the book has already been rejected by some agents at any given time! Sometimes querying a novel is like throwing it into a deep dark well and never knowing if it ever hits the bottom!

Some agencies who include that in their guidelines go on to give a time frame. “If you don’t hear from us in eight to twelve weeks, it’s a pass.”

Some agencies say “We respond to all queries” but don’t include any time frame. That’s fine, writers can consider a query open forever. Some say “We try to respond to all queries within twelve weeks” and that’s honestly still basically considering a query open forever.

Some, though, say, “If we don’t respond within twelve weeks, please feel free to reach out.” Look at that! Your writer friend has permission to ask how the query is going! That’s reassuring, right? Wrong, it’s terrifying. I’ve gotten up the guts to do it only one time.

So. After some completely unknown period of time one of four things will happen with your friend’s query.

1. It will never be answered and they’ll eventually consider it closed but they’ll never be really sure. Maybe the agent didn’t even get it? Maybe the agent did email you but you didn’t get that? It’s a mystery forever.

2. It will be rejected. A bummer! But at least your writer friend can move on from that one now.

3. It will get a partial request! Exciting! An agent read your friend or family member’s query and liked what they saw enough to ask to read more—most often the first three chapters, the first fifty pages, or the first hundred pages. Then your friend goes back to waiting. For how long this time? We still don’t know! But however long it does take, one of two things will happen:

   • It will be rejected. More of a bummer than a query rejection! But at least your writer friend has had a solid confidence boost, maybe some feedback and encouragement, and can move on from that one.

   • It will be upgraded to a full request! Exciting, see below, point 4!

4. It will get a full request! Exciting! An agent read your friend or family member’s query and liked what they saw enough to ask to read more, and to be sent the entire book! Then your friend goes back to waiting. For how long this time? We still don’t know! But however long it does take, one of four things will happen:

   • It will be rejected without much fanfare. Really big bummer! But at least your writer friend has had a really solid confidence boost, maybe some feedback and encouragement, and can move on from that one.

   • It will be rejected in a lovely manner. Less of a bummer! Your writer friend got a super confidence boost, probably good feedback and encouragement, and maybe even an invitation from the agent to query them again with another project if they don’t find representation with this one.

   • It will get a revise-and-resubmit request. From what I hear, this can run the gamut from exciting to nerve wracking to a bummer. The agent is interested in your friend’s work but isn’t ready to offer them representation unless they make requested changes and resubmit to make sure the requested changes were done in a way that works for the agent. If your writer friend or family member decides to go for the r&r request, they’ll work hard on the revisions and then send the altered story back, and one of three things will happen.

     • rejected, extreme bummer

     • still need more revisions, try again, extremely mixed feelings

     • an offer! see below!

   • It will get an offer of representation! Joy! The goal! Attained! (Kind of, some more steps to the process of getting an agent appear after this, they usually take about two more weeks before an offer turns into a signing.)

So, okay, once the queries are sent out into the wild, your writer friend or family member has very little control over how long the process will take. More than that, they have almost no real knowledge of how long the querying process will take. I’m sure they loved that you showed interest in their goals! That was really sweet of you! But it’s an impossible question for them to answer. And they probably will tell you when they do have good news to share! But they don’t know when that will be and they cannot guess.

After your writer friend or family member gets an agent, there’s a lot more that has to be done before the book can come out. There’s more revising with the agent, then the agent submits the book to publishing editors and the agent and the author wait together for rejections/acceptances, then there’s probably more editing, honestly this part of the process is not familiar to me but from everything I hear, it’s marked by a lot of the same uncertainty and lack of any distinct timeline for most of it. If any of my friends who are on submission decide to write a blog post of their own about this part of the process, I’ll link that here.

What it all boils down to is that your friend can almost never answer the question of how it’s going or when they’ll have news. But it’s really nice that you cared enough to ask!

I Had My First Querying Dream Last Night

I dreamed that I received an email from an agent who wanted to set up a phone call with me. For some reason, though, in the dream the email came through not to my laptop or my phone, but to the butter I’d just put into a hot frying pan. And though this didn’t strike me as strange, it still wasn’t ideal; the butter melted before I had a chance to read the whole email in it, much less respond.

And as absolutely ridiculous as it is, I still woke up from that dream with one second of frantically thinking it might have been real and I had to figure out how to get the butter to show me that email again.

That’s my first querying dream, I’m pretty sure. I’ve been querying my horror novel, These Familiar Walls, for two and a half months now. Which is about how long it took me to have wedding dreams during the wedding planning process (the most exciting of which involved a hostage situation, the worst of which involved teeth and fingernails), and also about how long it took me to have pregnancy/baby nightmares each time I was pregnant (the most disturbing of which involved demons and my father, the most fun involved a fire truck).

It’s funny that I had that dream now, because I’ve realized recently that the feverish way I had been checking my inbox for the first month or two after the Pitch Wars showcase has worn off. If I get a query rejection I shake it off and keep going. It’s not something I ever would have imagined I’d be good at before I started submitting short stories to magazines and anthologies. Spending a year getting used to the publishing world from that side of things really helped me a lot.

And I’m drafting my new novel! It’s going really well. I’m 51,733 words in as of today, a little over halfway through, and I really like my characters, and I’ve managed to give myself the skin-crawling creeps a good handful of times already. It’s a good feeling. I’m enjoying it a lot, and I think I’ll be done with the first draft by the end of this month.

Overall, in spite of that weird dream, I’m in a good place with my writing and with myself right now. (And I’ll be in an even better place when remote kindergarten is over, but that’s a blog for another day)

After Pitch Wars 2020, "Post-Project Bummer"

Back in October I submitted a novel I’d recently finished to Pitch Wars. I wrote about that here, if you want to check that out.

Now Pitch Wars is over, the showcase ended eleven days ago, and I thought I’d write this blog post a lot sooner than I wound up doing. I didn’t expect the week and a half after it ended to be marked with a kind of tired, sad lethargy. Now don’t get me wrong! I loved everything about the Pitch Wars experience – my absolutely wonderful mentor and fantastic new friends, what I learned about my writing and how to better it, what I learned about the industry and how to navigate it, everything. Even so, I did spend about a week wandering around feeling sad and not quite being able to connect it to anything. Easily distracted. Waking up at 5 am like I always do for writing, but then just refreshing my inbox and browsing the Twitter feed of a few literary agents. I was hit by that ill defined “post-project depression,” but I got a mild dose of it (more like “post-project bummer”) and I’m just about past it.

I’ve been working on an outline for my next novel, and I’ve reached out to some knowledgeable people and picked up some books for research, and I’m about ready to start drafting (while I continue my research). It’s going to be fun and scary, I’ve figured out all the twists and turns and the emotional arc, and I know my main character pretty well now. I’m well on my way, and that’s a relief.

I originally had intended to write a blog post about how great Pitch Wars was (and it was!), how fabulous my mentor Rochelle Karina is (and she is so fabulous!), how great the bonding with new people part of Pitch Wars has been (and it is!), and how excited I am to be querying (and I am, but honestly also stressed about it, which is normal!). After the first week passed, I also considered writing about the complicated feelings that come with not being one of the Pitch Wars showcase instant success stories (bummed to be feeling left behind, still conscious of the great boost to my writing and self-esteem that I was lucky enough to gain out of the experience, guilt at feeling bummed, annoyance at feeling guilty, etc, like I said, it’s complicated, but it’s alright).

Instead, I want to talk to anybody who’s feeling that kind of lost, occasionally breathless, stomach dropping unhappiness after a long project. Man, that feeling is weird and unexpected and it sucks, huh? Like jeez, can we not just feel proud that we accomplished something awesome? Instead we have to feel weird and unmoored and sad about it? I don’t think fighting the feeling or getting mad about it will help though. So I plan to pick a few indulgences that aren’t too unhealthy and go easy on my brain for a little longer. And I needed a reminder so maybe you do too – if you don’t jump feet first right into your next project it doesn’t diminish the work you just got done with, and it doesn’t mean that you won’t find your groove again soon. This is normal. You’re good, I’m good. We got this, we’re alright.

(But if you happen to be a literary agent glancing at my blog and deciding whether to offer me representation – uhh, pretend that the only thing in this post was the part about outlining my next novel, researching, and getting ready to start drafting.)

A Post-Christmas Story By My Five Year Old

Back in February I wrote a blog post about teaching storytelling to my son, followed in March by his first stories and in August by his second set of stories. This morning he told me he wanted to write a happy story for after Christmas and asked me to “tell it to everyone,” so here is my son’s latest tale.

The Day After Christmas

by G.R. Dotson

It was the day after Christmas. People with fake trees were walking around, putting their fake trees away in their basements. People with real trees were pulling their real trees outside for the trash. Nobody saw the old real trees stand up and jump away.

They jumped all the way to the water. At the beach they went into the water and started to float. They floated past some sharks. The sharks did nothing, because they don't eat trees.

The trees floated to an island called Jumping. On Jumping Island they jumped around and grew mouths so they could eat coconuts and fish. They used their branches for hands. When people come to Jumping Island the old Christmas trees fold up their hands and shut their mouths tight and stand straight and sort of bend around with the wind. They want to hide from people, because they don't like to be thrown away for the trash. When people leave again the trees open their mouths and jump and eat again.

The old Christmas trees stay on the island, and they're happy.

The End

Pitch Wars 2020!

Last month I wrote a blog about feeling confident lately, and referenced “something I’m trying to do.”

The something was that I submitted a novel to Pitch Wars! I’m still kind of surprised that I did that, put myself out there like that. I believe in my writing, that’s true, but if I’m being totally honest, entering Pitch Wars wasn’t something that I planned a long time in advance or agonized over. I did it the way I do lots of things — I had the idea, thought it was good, and just went for it. I submitted “These Familiar Walls,” the horror novel I’ve been working on, just a handful of hours before the Pitch Wars submission window closed.

And my first pick of mentors, Rochelle Karina, picked my novel!

I saw the announcement on Twitter and the 2020 Pitch Wars Mentee welcome email in my inbox at about 2 in the morning on Saturday the 7th, when I got up out of bed to use the restroom and noticed on my way back that my phone’s notifications were blowing up. And my first thought was that I was misinterpreting those things somehow, until I went to Pitch Wars blog and saw my name on the list.

So that was just over a week ago. I’ve gotten SO much out of this experience already. Rochelle is going above and beyond as a mentor, and I’m unbelievably excited and lucky to have her help. In between working on my novel and taking care of life stuff, I keep slipping into this wandering sort of disbelief. I can’t believe I’ve been picked. And the stuff that I’m learning as I go is going to improve my writing going forward, not just on this novel but in general.

I’m so excited. I’ll probably post about it more when I get too jazzed and don’t want to spam Twitter, haha.

And now I’d better get back to work!

Let's Do This

Hey, it's been a really long time, haha.
I have a hard time lately remembering to update the blog. And then when I do remember I have a hard time making myself go do it. But that's a concern for a different post. The writing itself is still going well, and that's what feels important for me.

But I was talking to a friend of mine about something I'm trying to do right now, and I realized something that I'm feeling really good about, so I wanted to share.

For the first time recently, I said (well, typed) to another person, “I believe in my writing.” I'm still kind of surprised that I can say it. But I do, I believe in my writing. I'm not super certain where this confidence came from? Because in many regards I am not exactly brimming with confidence. But recently I have realized that I sincerely do think that my writing is good enough and my stories are good enough, and in 2021 I'm going to try to get a literary agent. I'm going to try to become a traditionally published author. Putting it out into the world like this is scary, and maybe by this time next year I'll be writing a post about how this was a harder, longer process than I would have liked. But by this time next year I won't be writing a post about having given up.

I believe in my writing.

There's another thing I've learned about myself over this year of seeking out beta readers and submitting short stories. I'm not afraid of constructive feedback, and I don't let rejection stop me. Earlier I said I'm not super certain where my confidence came from, but let me tell you, I have no idea what this perseverance is about.

I've always been extremely sensitive to criticism and setbacks and rejections. But I've discovered recently that when I'm working with a beta reader, if the only feedback is to say that the story was good, I'm not satisfied. When I was younger, that would have been the goal for me. Write a story, ask for feedback, and be proud of myself if the feedback is just a compliment. Now, don't get me wrong! Compliments are kind and appreciated! But I want to make my work better. I believe in my writing and in my capacity to improve my writing. I've realized that these days I don't have to force myself to accept constructive criticism, I don't have to fight the urge to defend my writing when someone makes a suggestion, I enjoy it. It's fun, to have someone find the weak point and to discuss that with them and find a way to make it stronger. I actually like it. Weird, haha.

I can't say that I like rejections, I haven't gone that far down the path of being cool with whatever comes my way. A rejection still disappoints, and sometimes they sting a bit too. But I can say that they don't make me spend a day or a week doubting myself anymore. If a short story is rejected with feedback, I take that feedback to heart. And then I submit it somewhere else. I know, I know, that sounds so simple, so basic to the process. But this is still a big step for me. My first inclination, when I began submitting short stories, was to consign a rejected story to the trash heap. Not only have I overcome that impulse, I've banished it completely. And I'm a little amazed sometimes. I don't know who this person is, who doesn't let rejection stop her. This is a new type of me.

But here's my prediction. These are going to be the things that make the difference. I believe in my writing, I believe in my ability to improve my writing, and I am not afraid of rejection. Those factors are going to be the keys to finding success as a writer. I've had the talent, and I've had the work ethic (especially when it comes to writing). What I've got now is the confidence and the perseverance.

I feel like I've spent my whole life reading about how those factors are the keys to success and feeling dismayed by it, because those were things I didn't have. I don't say I didn't feel like I had them, I say I didn't have them, because that's true. It's just that what I didn't realize at the time – what maybe other people don't realize, so perhaps this can help someone else? – is that not having them doesn't mean never being able to have them. The reason I couldn't imagine myself having confidence was because I already didn't, and it became this loop. And I feel like I had to metaphorically grit my teeth and force myself out of that loop. But, man, if I can do it anyone can.

Get comfortable saying that you believe in your writing, and when you say it, don't weaken the statement or add qualifiers to it. Practice taking constructive feedback and working with it, even if you have to force yourself to do it at first, and if you find yourself getting defensive stop and be aware of that and try to let it go. And submit your stories, query your favorite agents, get rejected sometimes, let it hurt if it hurts but don't let it stop you, keep going, keep going, keep going. My husband calls it the “keep banging your head into the wall” method of accomplishing anything, and I think it works.

Confidence and perseverance can be attained, even if they don't come naturally to you.

Let's do this.

Stories By My Five Year Old

A couple of months ago I had a blog post of stories by my son, who was four at the time. He really enjoyed the process of writing those stories with my help, and loves to share them and show off. Today while I was working (okay, I’ll be honest, today while I was procrastinating) he ran around the house for five minutes shouting that it was time for me to work on my writing before eventually carrying my laptop to me. At which point he said that ACTUALLY I had to help him write a story. “Just one story,” I told him, “then you’re right, I do have to work on my own writing.”
”One story,” he said, “I promise.”
Anyway here’s all four stories he asked me to help him write today. Fortunately for my patience, two of them were rather short, haha.

THE GHOST IN THE SILENT HOUSE

by G.R. Dotson

This story is dedicated to my brother, my favorite friend.

A long time ago, an old lady was in a silent house. The house moved in the sky on the wind. When she needed to go grocery shopping she rode her magical pony from the house to the ground, and back again.

One day she came home on her magical pony, and her house wasn't silent anymore. There were noises, footsteps, everywhere. At first she thought maybe her pet lizard had escaped like it did one day before. But she heard a sound like hair brushing, and lizards don't have hair, so she knew that wasn't it.

She decided to investigate. She went upstairs to investigate but saw nothing. She heard it downstairs then. But when she went downstairs to look, she saw nothing again.

It had to be a ghost! She went to her magical pony and grabbed her groceries. At the store earlier she'd gotten a can of Ghostbuster Beans. When she threw the beans at the ghost it went away forever.

THE KILLER FLY

by G.R. Dotson

This story is dedicated to my whole family in this house.

The sewers were full of snakes, rodents, and cockroaches, and they were all hungry. They smelled a house full of trash, and the trash had fruits in it. The bugs went into the house first and ate all the fruits. The rodents went next and ate all the bugs. The snakes went last and ate all the rodents.

A killer fly made a sickness in the city that spread to all the houses, so they filled with trash, and the same thing happened in all those houses. It was a happy ending for the snakes.

THE WHOOSHING WIND

by G.R. Dotson

This story is dedicated to everybody in this city, even Aunt Courtney

Far away on the Pacific Ocean, there were ghosts whooshing the wind.

The ghosts were angry that someone accidentally teleported into the monster world. They were so angry that they snuck out to get rid of everyone.

But they came out at the ocean and saw a boat with an engine. G.R. and Courtney were on the boat, ready to hunt the ghosts.

Luckily, G.R. and Courtney trapped the ghosts all in a box and got rid of them.

THE DUBATA VAMPIRES

by G.R. Dotson

This story is dedicated to my brother and sister because I love them so much

In a basketball court in a park in the city, thirteen people fought thirteen vampires.

The vampires came straight out of Dubata, the monster world, where you can only go with a portal. The vampires left Dubata because they wanted people to be nice after they saw some people fighting an old lady.

The thirteen vampires didn't know that the old lady was the one who started the fight, because she was a monster of some kind, too. She was a zombie vampire who could change form.

She started the fight to trick the thirteen vampires into coming out of Dubata to get rid of the thirteen vampires so that she could go wherever she wanted.

Once they figured out her plan she fought them with a sword.

It took three hours to finish the fight. When she was finally done the thirteen vampires were gone and she could do whatever she wanted.

It wasn't a good day for anybody else, but it was a happy ending for the pretend old lady.

Outlines

Last week I wrote about my difficulty finding the balance between down time and working time, and how a lot of that difficulty is that I lose focus very easily. That feels like a natural segue into a topic that I've also seen getting some attention again lately in the writing community. Plotting versus pantsing.

I know most of the people who might read my blog will probably be familiar with those terms, but in case you're not, plotting is when a writer plans out what they're going to write in advance (self-explanatory term, I think), and pantsing is when a writer figures out the story as they go (flying by the seat of their pants).

I'm not here to argue one way as being better than the other. Everyone's brains work differently, and a method that's golden for one person will be garbage for someone else.

I think that those of you who can sit down and write out a whole novel and produce something cohesive without planning it out first are magical. How do you do it? How do you not get side-tracked or end up with something completely different from what you wanted? How do you foreshadow? How do you not get side-tracked? How do you mix in hints for twists that haven't happened yet if you don't know they're going to happen? Seriously, how do you not get side-tracked, I need to know this secret? I don't know how you do it and I think it's witchcraft and you are phenomenal.

I used to be a pantser. Or I guess I should say I used to try to be a pantser. And every time, I would lose the thread of my story and wind up somewhere wildly different in a way that didn't make sense. Not just that! Arguably worse, I'd also get completely bogged down in absolutely unnecessary exposition or back story or trivial nonsense. In one draft of a novel I wrote, I had an entire chapter of a character doing chores on her family's farm.

What I'm saying is that I need an outline.

But before I can even start outlining, I have to brainstorm. I am so bad at unstructured writing that I literally start by typing, “What is the thing I want to talk about with this story?” And then I type anything that comes into my head until I have a couple that resonate with me. Then I type, “What is the story about this?” A character usually pops up there, and with a character comes the sort of thing that character would be in conflict with. A situation or another person. From there my questions can get more specific (with the occasional “but why do they do this” or “how do I get them there” mixed in with the rest), until eventually I hit the kind of flow that lets me summarize the basics of the story.

Then I can start outlining. With novels I go chapter-by-chapter, and the first thing I note for each chapter's outline is what I want the character development to be like. I will then make a bullet point for the major events that happen in the chapter, with sub points for character reactions and motivations and any transitions I need.

I outline my short stories as well, although that's a lot less extensive. The beginning of the process is the same, but after the basic summary is written the last step is to more or less just expand on that and then get writing.

As I draft the story or the novel, I refer back to the outline frequently. At the beginning of every chapter or section, any time I find myself starting to drift (which happens a lot) and any time I get stuck. As I finish drafting a section of the outline, I change the font on that part of the outline to red.

I cannot imagine myself writing a whole novel without having the roadmap my outline gives me.

So that's my basic method, it works really well for me. Maybe if there's anyone out there struggling it would work alright for you, too.

As a side note, I don't outline my flash-fiction pieces. Those I do pants, I start with a concept and wing it. Anything longer than flash, though, and I get lost again. And – can you tell? – I don't outline my blogs, either.

If you have a different plotting method, or if you are a pantser and you want to shed some light on how you do that incredibly enviable magic, feel free to comment and share how your writing happens!

Unbalanced

I have difficulty giving myself down time. That might come as a surprise to people who knew me in childhood or high school, when procrastination was my specialty. These days, I don't give myself enough rest.

Part of me likes it like that. If I'm controlling my environment by cleaning or, more recently, packing for our upcoming move – or if I'm controlling my inner experience to some degree by sinking into my writing – or if I'm controlling my future actions with excessive planning and list making – then I'm not worrying as much about the things that I can't control.

(The other factor that keeps me busy, busier than everything else, is motherhood, but I can't control my children and I don't try to, so the engagement and time spent with my kids is its own category, neither the kind of work that I throw myself into to avoid thinking about anything stressful nor the kind of break I'm thinking of when I say “down time.” It's just...being a parent.)

And if I start moving – literally if I'm cleaning or working out, metaphorically with the writing and planning – and just...never stop...then the procrastinating slacker I am deep down inside can never break back through again.

Honestly this wasn't a problem in 2019 or before. I had my plans, I had my schedules, I had my tasks and my lists. But I wasn't excessive. This blog post was planned four months ago, because planning my content in advance in case I have a couple of weeks during which I don't have the inspiration for a topic works for me. Today's post was supposed to be about how I found the balance between letting myself relax and keeping myself productive. I was going to have started on that already.

Then 2020 happened. March is when the pandemic started to actually affect life here in the USA, but my husband and I had been watching the news since January. So when the governor of my state announced on March 12th that schools would be closed a few days later for, he claimed at the time, three weeks, we knew what was coming and went into hard lock down in our house on that day.

When it started, when coronavirus stripped away so many of the illusory pieces of control a lot of us let ourselves think we had, my coping strategies went into overdrive. It was alright at first, it made me feel better. But now it's starting to stress me out.

Okay, not starting. By now it's been stressing me out for a couple of weeks. I get up at 5 am every day to write before the kids wake up. I have a four year old and a one year old and I keep my house both clean and tidy – and that's not a brag, it's a cry for help. I have only been able to give myself one hour of down time a day, after the kids are in bed when I watch one or two episodes of a tv show before I go to bed to.

If I thought this was sustainable I'd probably never stop, but that wouldn't make it healthy.

So I'm working on trying to find the balance. I bought that super calm video game everyone's talking and meme-ing about (am I allowed to say their name? I don't know? but you know the one I mean) and I expect that to help. But this post was supposed to be written after I'd already accomplished the whole balance thing. But since I never found that balance I couldn't write the post and old procrastinator me got hold of my blogging habits in a bad way.

Which means that I'm doing it even right now. My original intent in writing this entry at last was, I thought, to force myself to find the work / down time balance. The idea was that if I publicly said, “I have a problem letting myself relax, I'm going to work on that,” then I'd have to. It would go on the list. I'd schedule it. Is that cheating? I don't care. It'll work. But I also used writing this post to get moving again on my blogging and now I feel like I just...can't...stop again.

Look for a new blog post exactly on schedule next week.

And maybe eventually screen shots of my island because gosh dang it I am going to start taking time for myself to relax.

5 out of 5 stars for "The Wolves In The Walls" by Neil Gaiman

My four year old son’s favorite book is easily Neil Gaiman’s “The Wolves In The Walls,” illustrated by Dave McKean. It was given to us by a friend as part of a care package after I had my daughter, and she also sent to my son his own pig puppet, which he loves to hold while we read the book.

I love reading this book to my son. The story is engaging, the characters are well developed in spite of the length constraints of the story book format, and it has funny little moments throughout. It’s also very easy to read out loud.

Overall, I highly recommend this book. It’s one of my favorite ones to read, and it’s my son’s favorite one to hear.

Of the book, my son had this to say:

What's your favorite part of the book? When the wolves come out of the walls, because I love them

Was there anything in the book that surprised you? When Lucy thought there was an elephant in the walls at the end

If you could be a character in the book for one day, who would you be? Lucy's mommy. Because I like when she tells Lucy there's no wolves in the walls but then she's wrong.

If one of the characters could come to our house to play, who would you like it to be? Lucy's brother, because I like everyone in the whole wide world.

If you had to pick one color to describe the book, what color would you pick? Why? Brown. Because we saw that in the pictures.

If you had to describe this book in one word, what word would you choose? Adventure

Did you like the ending of the story? Yeah, I like when Lucy said there's something in the walls again. The elephant.

Were there any new words that you learned from reading the book? Yeah, I learned about a tuba.

What do you think the author wanted us to take away from this book? Everything!

If you could ask the author one question, what would you ask? I would ask him why were the wolves even IN those walls.

Would you read other books by this author? Yeah, I want to read Coraline, because I saw the movie a lot of times. I want Wolves in the Walls to be a movie next!

Find it here:

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/wolves-in-the-walls-neil-gaiman/1100594180?ean=9780380810956

https://www.amazon.com/Wolves-Walls-Gaiman-Audio-Collection/dp/B002RSRP6A/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=the+wolves+in+the+walls&qid=1587337858&sr=8-1