Dunes

The drifts of snow on windy nights like this, especially when the snow is dry and light, remind me of the dunes at Jones Beach on Long Island. In places, like on our own front lawn, tall perennials still stand, their tops reaching well above the reach of the accumulated seven inches, to deeper in the drifts, of snow, and look just like the thick-stalked grasses that managed to survive between the blacktop of the parking lot and the crowded flat sands closer to the breaking waves. Along the wood-plank path, on either side, where the sun made the sand too hot to walk, the dunes took whatever shape the wind gave them.

Tonight, I'm on the couch (what else is new?) and snacking on pickle chips, something of which I had never heard the last time I was at Jones Beach.

As my recent tweets and FB status updates have alluded to, I have begun a new MS. I am foolish in this respect, and have been for years. But sometimes some free writing has to happen to get my juices flowing again, and the YA MS had been running on fumes for a couple of days. So I free wrote. And free wrote. And free wrote some more. And now I'm 60 pages in and don't want to stop. It feels great that writing is fun again!

So far, it's still coming pretty easily, but this has happened before. Hopefully this time's a charm, and I'll get this title finished enough that I'll be able to go back and do some edits to bring it up to submission quality.

The real question is, when will I get back to YA MS? Ugh.

So, in future, YA MS is still YA MS, and this new one is, um, YA MS . . . 2?