In this post, I exposed my lack of online cool and my contributing lack of cell phone technology.  Well, guess what, people?  Guess what shiny and beautiful toy I got for Christmas?  That’s right: a cell phone that goes on the INTERNET.  A cell phone that understands my voice, even.  I feel like I’ve joined the future where all the excitement happens. Also, I know I’m way behind the eight-ball, here, but Words with Friends is awesome.  My friend Ruth has been wiping the floor with me, so I don’t know why I’m enjoying it so much, but I am!

In assuming this new technology onto my person, I’m giving up a couple of things.  My comfort for not having a cell phone was a sense of righteousness.  I wasn’t one of those people who walks around glued to a tiny screen.  No!  I was better than that.  And I had no tiny screen to test me.  I was more than happy, let me tell you, to trade in my righteousness for the shiny little screen.  The other delight I’m giving up has to do with my students.  It was always pretty amusing to tell my middle schoolers that I did not have a cell phone.  Watching their twelve and thirteen-year-old expressions as they grappled with the bizarre idea that anyone would choose to live without a vital appendage – priceless.

This week has also seen the beginning of revisions to Book 2 of the Tyme series.  The cultural context of the place where the book begins is so much clearer to me now that it’s almost easy to get underway.  And I’m learning a lot about my process.  Apparently I am a writer who races to finish a draft, screeches to a halt right before writing the big ending moment, asks one million questions of the story, then starts again, almost from scratch, but snagging big chunks from the first draft where they still work.  This may be a pretty common process.  I don’t know.  It works for me, though.  And there’s a domino effect, when this happens.  Changes to one book in the series mean changes to all books in the series.  I do feel pretty nervous when I think about the fact that, eventually, the first book will be published and out the door, and I won’t be able to make changes anymore.  I’m sure that’s a common fear.  Relinquishing control.

Hey, my phone made a noise like a mountain temple!  Awesome, someone wrote to me.  No, it’s just junk e-mail.  Not as awesome.  But my husband is awake now, so I think I’ll pummel him until he plays a word.