erin

this is a post about nothing

I am completely useless this week.

Multiple times over the last few days I have tried to blog and failed. Am severely lacking in focus.

I have that disease where I can’t read, too. I have been carrying The Book Thief from room to room with me, putting it down on various surfaces. It’s sitting on the printer right now. I want to read it, but I can’t seem to get myself to just sit down and actually read.

I have successfully made tea. Several times. I have pseudo-successfully started working on a redesign for the blog that will hopefully be implemented over the weekend.

I got a string of little paper lantern lights that are now strung merrily over the iMac, making writing central a great deal more festive. If I remember to dig out my tripod later I will post a photo.

I had an idea for an art piece and then was thwarted by the fact that despite having seven decks of playing cards, only two of them have jokers and they’re not the joker that I need.

I think mostly I am biding my time (with relative degrees of success) until I can check back into the Revisionland Hotel. I’m planning on starting my additional changes next week, because I already have a list of things I know need changing and the rest of my beta feedback should be coming in relatively soon. I’m kind of looking forward to it, which is weird because I really thought I was suffering from revision fatigue, and now having taken a couple weeks off from it I really just want to crawl back into it.

And now I have ignored this post without posting it for about an hour. Yeah.

By erin, ago

flax-golden tales: excerpt from a notebook found in the woods near what used to be I-93

zombie apocalypse

excerpt from a notebook found in the woods near what used to be I-93

Things I Didn’t Expect About The Zombie Apocalypse, a numbered list.

1. Everything kind of stopped before anything really happened. You’d think things would stay pretty normal until the undead were knocking down your door, but everyone panicked way before that. As soon as it was even mentioned on the news people up & left.

2. There are a lot more ways to die, beyond the classic eaten by zombies bit, which I’m not sure should really count as a way to die. Is it a way to undie? I don’t know.

3. People I thought totally had it together were the first ones to flip out. If I’d have bet on who would still be here at this point back in the day I would have lost big time.

4. It’s been a really long time since the apocalypse and I still haven’t actually seen a zombie yet.

About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.

By erin, ago

seasonally inappropriate

Hey, remember how about a month ago I promised photos of my new scarf that took me ages to knit? Apparently I’m just as slow at posting things as I am at knitting.

Months ago now, one of my dearest far-away friends sent me a box of this gorgeous red wool eyelash yarn.

I’m not particularly good at following patterns, so I decided to turn it into a fairly basic scarf.

It’s actually more like a boa.

And now that it’s practically summer out (seriously, it was almost 90 here yesterday), I have finally gotten around to modeling it in dramatic sunshine for the interwebs.

red scarf

It proved rather difficult to photograph despite the helpful sunshine. You’re just going to have to trust me that it goes down to my knees.

I kind of love it. And of course, now it’s far too warm to wear it. I did wear it out once or twice in March, but it’ll have to wait until next year to get into heavy scarf rotation.

(For those of you who haven’t seen me in awhile: Yes, that is my hair. It is both that short and that straight.)

By erin, ago

cake & kitten

Other than the fact that I am still coughing, after over a month of lingering chest cold, this weekend was lovely and springy.

Not really knowing what to do with myself now that I am out of Revisionland for the moment, I thought I would bake muffins. But then I couldn’t find poppy seeds and I really, really wanted lemon poppy muffins. So while I wandered dejected and sad-faced through Whole Foods, the boy & I stumbled upon a tower of bundt cakes, and one of them was lemon with this lovely drippy icing and white chocolate shavings on top and we decided it was like muffins, but better.

So we pretty much ate lemon bundt cake all weekend in the sunshine.

dramatically lit bundt

It was really good. Likely better than any thwarted muffin attempt.

While I had the camera out I tried to take photos of Tessa, and while she is usually a very photogenic kitten she was not particularly obliging this time.

tessa tongue

I set this photo as the wallpaper on the iMac and I keep laughing maniacally at it. I think this was actually mid-tail-lick rather than proper yawn.

I spent the cake-less, kitten-less hours of the weekend reading and cleaning the studio while the boy read the new revisions. Other than some minor things that still need tweaking, he really likes the major changes so that’s good. He’s read like, every incarnation of this thing and he’s a Virgo so I’m going to take that as a sign that I’m on the right track. Still have it out with other beta readers, so I’m going to try not to obsess over it while I wait and actually get other, non-revising things done for a change.

Also, my windows are open and it is sunshiny and that is happy-making.

By erin, ago

flax-golden tales: secret wishes of stuffed tigers

secret wishes

secret wishes of stuffed tigers

The kids that play outside make fun of the tiger in the window simply because it is there, and thus fodder for amusement.

Stupid fluffy baby toy.

And the tiger cannot move from the window, so it is forced to watch and listen. It accepts their taunts with unblinking plastic eyes.

The neighbor glares from her window across the way. It is impossible to tell if she glares at the children or the tiger or both.

The tiger doesn’t mind. The tiger is patient.

It knows that if it wishes hard enough, someday it can be a real tiger.

Then they’ll be sorry.

About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.

By erin, ago

tales from the revisionland hotel

I’ve been missing in action because I’ve been sequestered in the Revisionland Hotel.

It’s a lovely place, really. The bar is lively and full of characters and complimentary beverages of questionable content. Room service brings pens and paper, chocolate and caffeine.

I’ve been here so long I started managing the place. I wish I was kidding.

But really, I knew I was going to have to rip my manuscript apart and rework it heavily in November.

I took November off to write the first draft of a different novel.

I took December mostly off because it was holiday-ridden and cold.

I started working on it, really working on it and not just thinking about it and jotting down notes, in January.

It’s going to be done tomorrow. This is not an April Fool.

I still have a few things to change and I think I need to adjust the end a bit, but it’s novel-shaped again and I think it’s shaped like a better novel than it was before, but I need some second opinions.

Sometime tomorrow this massive overhaul of a revision will be sent off to the wonderful world of beta readers.

Once they have it I think I’ll be hanging out in the Hotel bar for awhile.

By erin, ago