Snow Day Writing Report

It's 4 PM. I'm at home, at my dinosaur computer in The Dungeon, writing away. Yesterday the forecast was for snow starting around 11:00 PM, 3-5 inches accumulation, or maybe 4-7 inches, depending on who you believe. I e-mailed my boss to say I wasn't going to be in on Thursday, and I reported on Facebook that I was going to read, research, and write till my fingers were raw, my arms and shoulders tight, my butt numb, my eyes blurry, and my head hurt. Okay, I didn't actually mention the butt numb part on FB, but I was thinking that.

The storm gave us only a little over 3 inches; it was over by 11 AM. With that little, I probably could have driven the 15.6 miles to work with no problem, so possibly I wasted a vacation day. But I get plenty of vacation after 20 years with the company, so I don't mind. And it wasn't wasted at all. It was kind of a dry run for what a day might be like if I had a real writing career, where I wrote full time. Now, it wasn't a true dry run, because knowing I have the day job to go back to tomorrow, I didn't stick to writing quite as faithfully as I should have.

But write I did. And research. The day began with a couple of chapters in Ezra. Devotional, yes, but also part of my research for To Exile and Back. From my reading chair, I discussed stocks with Lynda, and I began to draft a genealogy article for Suite101.com. Then I came to The Dungeon. First I proof-read and reconsidered the Documenting America chapter that I wrote yesterday. It still seems good. I polished it a little and consider it done. Then I wrote and posted the article on Suite101.com. That brings me up to 120 articles there.

Upon publishing, I saw an e-mail in my Suite inbox. It was from an editor of a transportation newsletter. They need a writer with a civil engineering background to work on the feature article for their next newsletter issue. Would I be interested? I quickly said e-mailed her yes, and suggested a phone call. Then I went upstairs to listen to the weekly conference call Lynda joins each Thursday noon for stock trading. During the call I worked in ideas for new articles for Buildipedia.com. After the call and lunch I returned to The Dungeon and fired off an e-mail to the Buildipedia editor. He quickly replied that he's interested, and asked for a phone call next week.

About that time my computer bad stuff protection program decided to do something, so I pulled out a volume of The Annals of America and chose the next subject for Documenting America, read it, and began to formulate a chapter about it. I next went to the daily writing blogs I follow, and found a great new post on Jon Konrath's blog.

During all this activity, I came upon about six ideas for posts to this blog. I think the next step will be do get those down on paper so I don't lose them. I might be posting here with greater frequency for a while. The internal but public debate about e-self-publishing continues, along with some other subjects.

For the rest of the day, I'll finish reading a couple of blogs, plan and perhaps draft the Documenting America chapter, maybe work some on either the harmony of the gospels of on my baseball novel. Oh, I need to prepare for teaching Sunday school, and write some student sheets. I don't know if I'll look to do any recreational reading or not, but perhaps.