What a week! So many changes, and all of them so fast.

Just two weeks ago Robb and I applied to be house-sitters for a home in Mexico, a home with 2 dogs and 8 cats. We were accepted, and now I am sitting under a palapa with a warm Mexican breeze blowing across my keyboard and a cat wrapped around my feet. It’s truly lovely, the house, the dogs, the cats, everything. We’ve signed on for 7 months. It will be interesting to see how many Mexican influences show up in my writing.

As you can guess, I didn’t have a lot of free time this week, so I cheated a bit. Instead of writing a whole first draft, I only wrote half of a first draft. The second half. Over a year ago I attended the SCBWI Winter Conference in New York City. It was an inspiring week. I found myself coming up with lots of ideas for picture books. As they came to me I wrote them down in my notebook.

Today I was going through that notebook, remembering all of the wonderful things I had learned. One thing I found was a half finished story. I had started writing it on the bus ride  home from that conference, somewhere between NY and Washington DC.

It was cute. It deserved to be finished. Since my other idea would be a lot more work, I opted for the easy way out. My other idea will be happy to wait till next week.

This all made me take a fresh look at my unfinished story file. There’s some good stuff in there. I feel like there are too many unfinished stories out there in the world.  Poor things.  I’ll start giving the ones I have a chance. Who knows, the book of my career may be hiding in there. They must have some promise or I wouldn’t have started them in the first place.

How many of you have stories that could use a little love? Maybe it’s time to give them another look.