Friday Five

1. I am not a morning person. I have never been one that does well without sleep. In high school and most of college, I went to bed around 10:00 (well except for the weekends). Then I met my husband who is a night person and I adjusted my schedule. Now I work and think best between 10:00 pm and 1:00 am. However, this year my daughter started middle school and schools starts at 7:30. It's killing me. I'm finding that I have to go to bed earlier, and I'm losing some of my creative time. Maybe I need to switch to being a morning person. Is that even possible?  Anyway, the kids get the first two days off of school next week, and I've been chanting to myself for the last few days, just a few days until I have four days to sleep in. Four whole days!

2. This week I have been rereading books by some authors. I am a rereader, and I probably do about fifty percent of my reading as rereading. It goes in phases too. I love revisiting stories and characters that are powerful and meaningful and seeing what makes a story really work for someone.

3. I have started on a new manuscript in the last month or so. It will go by the name of Aimee--since I name my stories after the main characters. Aimee is a contemporary YA. Something I haven't done before and technically could also be named Steve, since I am attempting to narrate from both perspectives. We will see how it goes. But I really like the two characters. It's a fun story.

4. The weather has been crazy in my part of the country. We were affected by that freezing polar vortex and got down to 9 degrees (quite a feat in the South), but then we were in the 70s the Saturday after that (5 days later). I think people tend to get the sniffles more with all the fluctuations.

5. I'm really struggling to come up with a number five today. It's an early release day, which means my kids are getting home three hours earlier than normal from school. It should be a good day overall. Have a happy Friday!