Dear amazon.ca,

Thank you for sending Hospital Music like, two seconds after I ordered it because it came on Friday and that was the highlight of what was otherwise a pretty grey week.

love,
courtney

I changed the layout. You know how it is–you blog about something sad and later the idea of writing anything new that will show up on the layout where you blogged about the sad thing is just too awful to entertain so you can’t and then four days later you haven’t written anything at all. Yes.

99% Of Us Is Failure is a fantastic song.

Did you know this photo is the only visual representation of the lowest I’ve ever felt about writing? It is true. It was taken in January 2007 after an excruciatingly heartbreakingly close call with a literary agent and I was crushed. There’s no worse feeling than getting so close to something and ending up farther back from where you started and then having to figure out where to go from there. I’m glad it happened now as it ultimately made me more determined and that determination helped me write a better novel which ended up leading me to my awesome literary agent, Amy (and I couldn’t ask for a better or more enthusiastic advocate of my work) but at the time, I walked around feeling like a deflated balloon for ages. Writing is not for sissies!

So I’m 5k words into my latest novel, which makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside. This one has been an often frustrating and challenging lesson in book making! In the idea stages, it was a million different things. And then it became one thing. And then that one thing went in on itself and changed and then it went out on itself and changed again. And then it changed once more for good measure. All while it was changing, I was writing the same four pages. Over and over. For over a month. That was not fun at all. I’ve finally got the thing nailed down and am optimistic about it’s chances of becoming a fully realised novel. We’ll see where I am at in 50 pages and people who aren’t me have looked at it. I hope it works out. I’m really excited about it.

In other news, there is a HUGE WASP in my room! Agdfsaklfsdlkjsda!

edit: after ten minutes of terrorizing me, the wasp landed on the top of my water bottle and stayed there for ages. So I grabbed the water bottle–very carefully–and placed it in the hall outside my bedroom! Yes! Take that, wasp!

Except now there is a huge wasp on my water bottle directly outside of my bedroom and I am thirsty.

In hindsight, I did not handle that situation right at all.

edit 2: IT CAME BACK! It found its way back into my room through the closed door and landed on my laptop!! safkjssdfa!! I set it free. It was very harrowing. If it gets back into my room after this, I might have to join the Witness Protection Program.