going on hiatus

An announcement!

Erinland is going on temporary hiatus. Not that it will be terribly noticeable, since I have pre-scheduled flax-golden tales & will possibly be posting photos from hiatusland, but I thought I’d announce it anyway.

I am hugely busy this week and then I shall be away on proper vacation next week. I might be Instagraming or Tumblring occasionally and I shall try to keep up with Twitter but I won’t have much internet, so I will be mostly unplugged.

For your listening enjoyment while I’m away, something from my latest musical obsession: MS MR.

MS MR – Hurricane from MS MR on Vimeo.

(Dance party.)

apple picking dance party

Be back soon(ish).

brief psa

Erinland is on the road and not operating as usual this week, though Friday’s flax-golden tale will be posted because of the magic of pre-scheduling things.

(Erinland is not on vacation, per se, just doing stuff that is not occurring in NYC. If all goes according to plan, proper vacationing will occur in October.)

So I will not be properly blogging* for about a week & I will be quieter than usual on Twitter. I will likely keep Tumbling things that I like on Tumblr at the same rate, which is inconsistently.

Here is a picture from the road, complete with my feet floating in the sky through the magic of reflection and light and glass and the fact that Adam doesn’t mind my feet on the dashboard.

dashboard feetWill be back soon.

*this is a sorry excuse for a blog post and mostly just here to have something in between last week’s flaxie and the next one.

settling and also comments regarding communication in electronic mail form

I’ve been staring at February strangely because I am confused and annoyed that it has arrived already, but it’s been five days now so I think it’s here to stay and didn’t make a mistake or anything. I am going to choose not to think too much about my unfinished January to-do list and instead make new lists, probably without months on them this time.

Still settling in here, hanging things on walls and re-arranging lamps. I’m slowly but surely putting together my office, a process that has become slightly more complicated by the fact that my new desk does not have drawers. Most of my office stuff is in cardboard boxes, still, helpfully labeled things like “office – papers” and “office – fragile” and hopefully soon I will be able to put the fragile things and the paper things in places that are not cardboard. Cardboard feels so temporary.

I put my newly pared-down bulletin board up, which makes it look sort of office-y. This is the third space I’ve had this board in and I’ve stripped it clean before hanging each time, which feels appropriate for a new space. I added a row of my Nick Bantock postcards which have hung in every space I’ve lived since I was in college and are beginning to show their age around the corners, but having them up above my desk makes it feel more like a space I can write in. Also the fact that I have a desk chair now helps with that. Chair not pictured, but comfy.

board with bantock

(Also pictured on board: lower half of a print from Etsy, torn playing card procured at Sleep No More & postcard from one of several stays at the Royalton Hotel.)

I am still waiting on a few more pieces of furniture, and I keep encountering things that are in need of other things, like rugs that need those non-slippy rug pad things to keep them from slipping, but it’s looking more and more livable every day. I’m trying not to think too hard about how the estimated delivery date for my bookshelves is March, but at this rate that’ll be any day now.

 

And now, a word about email.

I am finally pretty much caught up with my personal email. For about three hours on Sunday I had nothing in my inbox and it was magical.

I am woefully behind on website email, and when I say “woefully behind” I mean I think my autoreply still says it’s October.

The important part: I simply do not have time to respond to every email I receive.

I tried for awhile and I can’t keep up. It takes away from time I should be writing* and also I have this creeping social anxiety that spreads to email answering and I need to think about how to respond properly so it takes me longer to respond and some people could probably handle quickly jotting off replies but I can’t. I’m sorry. I wish I could because it makes me feel terrible that I can’t respond individually to each and every message I get. I do try to read absolutely everything, though, even if I can’t read in a timely manner.

If you need to contact me for professional reasons, there is contact information for my agency in the sidebar of the blog. There is also a Random House contact for press-related inquiries.

I took my own email contact off the website for now, I am trying to figure out the best way to manage it in the future. Please be patient with me, I’m still comparatively new at this.

I’m hoping to spend most of the next few months working on a novel and in order to do that I need to basically live in my head. There’s a lot of stuff in there that I need to sort through and explore and figure out how best to tell the story of the particular bits that I’m sorting through and exploring for this novel. Also there are characters in there who are getting annoyed with me for neglecting them for so long.

I am trying to find a good balance of social media and hopefully that means the blog will be updated with actual Thoughts on a fairly regular basis.

The best place to say hi or ask questions that can be answered in 140 characters or less is and likely always will be Twitter. I do try to answer all directed-at-me @ replies, though I think sometimes Twitter eats them.

I’ve had a lot of stuff to deal with in the last two years, both personally and professionally, and I’m still working through a lot of it and trying to figure out what works best and how to handle, well, life. And when I say “a lot of stuff” I mean I would not wish my last two years on anyone, and for every high-high there’s been a low-low that I can’t tell the internet about. It’s tiring. Sometimes I need to walk away and make gluten-free salted caramel brownies. If I could I would share them with everyone (unless for some reason you don’t like caramel or chocolate or sea salt).

So, please bear with me while I settle in to new spaces and new life and quickly-moving new year and attempt to figure all of this stuff out. I greatly appreciate it.

 

*this includes time doing writing-related things like soaking up inspiration or reading or figuring out where to keep the pens with my drawerless desk.

a public service announcement from erinland

Erinland is moving. It is currently being dismantled and placed into cardboard boxes and it will hopefully reach its New and Exciting location before 2012 comes to a close and the New Year will be extra New in celebration.

As a consequence of the relocation of Erinland, expect low levels of internet communication for the next few days along with periods of complete radio silence.

Once the dust has settled, there shall be updates and possibly photos.

A hint as to the future location of Erinland, in holiday gift form (from my sister & brother-in-law):

new yorker

See you there.

e.

PSA regarding blog comments

Considering the fact that a comment I received on the blog yesterday reduced me to a sobbing mess for a good hour (it was not just the comment, the comment was the back-breaking straw on a terribly stressed camel of a day) I feel it would be wise to disable comments on the blog for a while. I have been historically lousy about replying to them anyway.

I am terribly fond of the internet but I am also a sensitive person which is not always the best combination for being a fairly public figure on said internet. And the most hurtful things seem to reach me via blog comments.

(I also tend to think of my website as my personal corner of the internet, like my own little virtual living room where I serve several varieties of tea in non-matching cups and tell small stories and try to keep the artwork dusted. I think I take things said here more personally than I might on Twitter, which always seems like Someone Else’s living room.)

This particular comment (which I did not approve for posting) derided me for sounding like an over-excited schoolgirl on NPR, going on at length about my repeated use of the word “like” and other such evidence and mainly, I think, implying that I should be able to speak as well as I write.

In thinking about it now that I am slightly more clear-headed, I am (and have always been) wary of expecting someone who can express themselves properly while typing to be able to accomplish the same feat with their tongue with similar ease, especially on the spot.

I am more skilled with my fingers, at least in that capacity. I wrote a flax-golden tale about it. I have social anxiety that ties my tongue more than might be considered normal.

Sometimes I am reduced to making wordless noises and I end up sounding something like a baby bird in order to express myself properly vocally though I try not to do that in interviews.

And the commenter did not mention this, but I giggle. Shamelessly. Whenever I can. Sorry.

Working with words in writing is a different animal than working with them in conversation. I also have a lot more practice with one rather than the other.

Yes, this is one comment in a sea of lovely comments (though there have been other upsetting ones in the past) but I think my initial stressed-out reaction is a good enough reason to suspend blog comments for a bit.

I am almost always reachable on Twitter for any blog comment-esque thoughts you might want to express and I might re-enable comments at some point in the future.

For the moment I’m going to stick to comments I find unexpectedly in my wallet.

gone fishing

 

I am going on holiday, which always sounds more festive than “on vacation” for some reason.

It is mostly a writing holiday. I shall be hiding myself away and working on the new novel. Hopefully getting it something closer to novel-shaped or at least adding more words to my Scrivener file and doing some novel-related research as well.

I will not be checking non-personal email pretty much for the rest of the month. I am going to try to catch up a bit before I leave but I doubt I’ll get to everything. If you’ve written (or plan to write) about something important or time-sensitive please contact Jen Marshall at Random House or Inkwell Management, contact links are in the blog sidebar.

I am mostly going to be avoiding the internet but I will be posting occasional, likely pre-written blogs and flax-golden tales. I will also be limiting the tweeting but I will probably Instagram pretty things because I like Instagram and pretty things.

I haven’t taken a proper leaving home, just-for-myself holiday since… I don’t even know. At least before the book sold.

There are going to be palm trees involved. They will likely be captured via Instagram for posterity.

So, be good while I’m gone. Though keep in mind my definition of “good” is fairly flexible.

 

(Photo at top of this post was as appropriate a journey-bound pic as I could take still in the confines of my apartment, of a corner of the bulletin board in my office.)