And so it begins...

I have always trailed at least a good three years behind the cutting edge. I first noticed this in tenth grade when, finally convinced that clogs were here to stay, I purchased my first pair. I still remember the day in chemistry class when I walked from the back of the quiet room up to Mrs. Lems' desk to hand in my test paper. No one was still wearing clogs, the trend-savvy had moved on to wedged heels, and I remember the way one pair of eyes after another looked up from their papers to see what horse was clip-clopping down the aisle between the lab tables. (Since my feet had been growing steadily, I had bought them a little large—you know, to extend their usefulness—so the wood made a particularly resonant rap against the tile floor.) My narrow feet stopped growing and never got used to them; I threw them away after only a month or two of flopping around.

Let's hope I do better with this blog.

I have feared that writing a blog posed a potential drain on my creative energy, and I didn't want to usurp precious writing and editing hours by reading the blogs of others, either. So I held out against blogging until it became something of a public relations mandate for a writer. (Or maybe that happened three years ago.)

Thus the title. Yes, it is blatant self-promotion for the novel I am trying to find representation for, THE GIRL WHO FELL FROM THE SKY, but it is also a reference to wisdom hard-won in my life: if you fail to move forward with the times, you become a stationary target for large ideas falling from above.

Now that I sit down to my first blog entry, so many ideas crowd my mind that I must admonish them to wait in line without screaming; I look forward to setting them down in this space in an orderly fashion. The same thing happened with the life-changing practice of journaling: never thinking I'd have much to say, I waited until I was 38 to begin. Much to my surprise, though, words spilled from my pen until my cramped hand had to put an end to the first entry.

Guess I'm just one of those writers who needs the pressure to build up inside before she can clog. I mean blog.