No, wait.  Are you kidding me?  It’s Thursday?  Time to write the blog again?  Where did the week go?

I’ll tell you where it went–to driving–1,785 miles worth of driving to be exact–with stops in Sedona, Bakersfield, Ashland, and finally home to Bellevue, WA.  Tired?  You betcha?  After two weeks in a self-imposed pressure cooker of a writing workshop and four days of driving, I’m beyond tired, but very, very grateful to be out of the car.  Bella and Bill are glad to be out of the car, too.

This morning we’re sipping our coffee on a different patio.  Instead of watching the birds duke it out on the bird block, I’m on the look out for the heron.  (Just because I feed doves, quail and sparrows, doesn’t mean I’m willing to feed herons! Instead of dodging the sun as it rises over the palm trees and filters through the magnolia trees to turn the Tucson patio into an oven by ten AM, we’re sitting here with the over-head infrared heater keeping our bare toes toasty.  Yes, bare feet on both ends of the journey are key to my well-being.

The day after we left town, the temperature in Tucson was predicted to hit 108.  I’m saying we left just in time, but by the time we got out of the car for a quick pitstop in Sutherlin, Oregon, yesterday, both Bella and I thought the breeze accompanied by 68 degree temperatures was a bit too chilly for our very thin Tucson blood.

Leading the writing workshop, sponsored and hosted by the University of Arizona Library’s Special Collections, was tough on me because I was tough on the students.  By the end of the two week period, most of my hard-working attendees had completed 13,000 to 15,000 word novellas!  I spent my mornings, noons, afternoons, and nighttimes editing same.  I did not have time to do any of my own writing because I was too busy editing theirs.

Graduates are telling me in their written evaluations that I was a tough, demanding  taskmaster.  I put a lot of pressure on them to produce, and it turns out, most of them surprised themselves by delivering.  The idea of having a deadline made them work harder than they thought possible.  As I learned in writing my very first book, there’s something magic about having and meeting a deadline–even a self-imposed one.

But now I need to make that magic work for me, too.  I have a deadline–a serious deadline on Ali # 10 which now has a name–Cold Betrayal.

That being said, it’s time to go fill my coffee cup and go to work.

Later, Gator.  (Comma after Later–direct address.)  Oh, wait.  (Sentence Fragment)  I guess I can stop putting those in now.  (Those what?  Faulty pronoun reference.)

The workshop is over.