A week into the new year, and I'm still staggering around wondering what happened. So it goes. I've had a wonderful last month working exclusively on some new poems, which I've now worked into the ground and need to leave alone for a few days—the fabulous poetry shredders/editors are on them, a couple of my friends and colleagues who know insane amounts about poetry, read it voraciously, and are generous enough to turn their beady little critical eye to mine.

As great as that was, tomorrow I dive headfirst into the next section of the novel I'm putting together little by little. I haven't worked on a novel in a few years, and it's a whole lot more fun now—writing my first novel, The Center of Winter, was awful. I loved the book in the end, but the million years I spent writing it were basically years where I was teaching myself to write a novel. Not as much fun as it sounds. But now, with this new novel underway, I can actually enjoy it. Writers talk to themselves while they work, growling, muttering, sighing, yelling, stomping off, occasionally cracking up. I'm looking forward to a few months of talking to my office walls before I go on tour.

I'm doing a few touch-ups to that way-I'm-living thing—I do it from time to time, add a few things to the routine, take out a few that aren't working for me, and looking forward to a brand new year. Hope all of you are as well. See you next week!

Cheers,
Marya