Flower Time

I really need to find something to write. Yesterday I scrubbed my refrigerator, inside and out, including purging the vintage condiments. That's not normal, healthy behavior for me. The trouble is, I'm not sure what to write and I have no projects that are in a phase ready for writing. I've got one waiting on proposal approval, one waiting for feedback from my agent before submission, and one waiting in the wings to send to my agent after the previous one gets dealt with. The last two are first books in series, so if they sell, then the next thing I'd need to write would be the sequel, but I don't want to start the sequel to a book that hasn't been submitted. Anything I start now would likely soon be backburnered indefinitely. I have been playing with ideas for that mystery I keep talking about, but the book that popped into my head yesterday while I was standing on a stepladder, scrubbing the top of my refrigerator was one I haven't touched for nearly ten years that I started writing about twenty years ago. I pulled it up and re-read the beginning, and while I can tell a difference between the bits that were written twenty years ago and the parts I wrote the last time I worked on it, it's really pretty good. I still love the characters, the world and the premise. Most of the opening that kicks off the story really works and wouldn't require a lot of rewriting. The middle is what needs to be scrapped because I don't think those specific events all work. It's a traditional medieval-esque fantasy, which can be a tough sell these days, and it is essentially a romance, but not a genre Romance, so I might fall into the trap of it being too romancey for fantasy and not romancey enough for romance. Then again, the characters are pretty young -- the heroine is 19 and I think she actually reads much younger than that so I could probably make her 16 or 17 -- so maybe I could adjust it a bit and call it YA, where you can blur genres a lot more easily. And then there's the fact that I originally planned it as a trilogy, but now I'm wondering if I should cram the whole plot into a single book. It actually reminded me of one of the Nebula YA books I read this year. You know, I think maybe what made me think of it was the book I read earlier this week where I wanted to write the book that was described on the back cover. This isn't really that book, but it does contain the elements from that cover description that appealed to me. I suppose it wouldn't hurt to play with it some while I'm in a holding pattern. This is a time when I'm allowed to be a little ADD, when I can pick up and play with whatever ideas strike my fancy without worrying about deadlines. But for now, we're having truly lovely weather, and I think I must go to Home Depot and buy some flowers to plant in containers for my patio. I suddenly feel a desperate need to have flowers around me. I may even go by the grocery store and see if they have any fresh flowers in their "day old" section that I can rearrange. Saturday is supposed to be just about perfect for an outdoors day, so I've been researching outdoor festivals or some other reason to be outside.