Life Stepping Forward

Thank you to everyone who called, texted, sent cards, emails, flowers, plants, etc. We arrived in Chicago at 8am yesterday morning after an 18 hour car ride back from Texas and are going about figuring out how to deal with the rest of our lives without Chris's mom being a part of the picture. Though she will be a part of the picture because we'll remember her and talk about her and, if need be, talk to her and we'll tell Clara all about her and how her grandmother loved her with all her heart and still does.

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I just spilled coffee over the desk. I am a chronic spiller of things.

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I wanted to share Neil Gaiman's recent blog post with you because he talks about creativity and how the urge strikes and how it doesn't in response to a fan's question about their sense of entitlement when they're not getting their next book fast enough. Here's a bit of it that I really loved:

You don't choose what will work. You simply do the best you can each time. And you try to do what you can to increase the likelihood that good art will be created.

And sometimes, and it's as true of authors as it is of readers, you have a life. People in your world get sick or die. You fall in love, or out of love. You move house. Your aunt comes to stay. You agreed to give a talk half-way around the world five years ago, and suddenly you realise that that talk is due now. Your last book comes out and the critics vociferously hated it and now you simply don't feel like writing another. Your cat learns to levitate and the matter must be properly documented and investigated. There are deer in the apple orchard. A thunderstorm fries your hard disk and fries the backup drive as well...

And life is a good thing for a writer. It's where we get our raw material, for a start. We quite like to stop and watch it.