East Coast Derby Extravaganza 2011!

This week I'm taking off my author hat and strapping on my derby helmet. While most of my author-friends (and authors who aren't my friends but who I sure WISH were my friends!) are skipping around New Orleans at ALA, I'll be heading down to Feasterville, PA for the East Coast Derby Extravaganza (ECDX)!

Carolina's Holly Wanna Crackya trying to get by Boston's

Maura Buse. ECDX 2009 (photo by Joe Rollerfan)

My team, the Boston Massacre, will be playing Tampa and Dutchland this weekend. All other hours of the weekend will be spent watching other games or hanging with my fellow derby people at the pool. ECDX is pretty much the derby equivalent of ALA in my mind, though I do wish I could be at both. Someday I'm going to hit up BEA and ALA and SCBWI-LA and all the other awesome places where authors gather, but for now I'm just going to be psyched that I get to connect with you all via blogs and twitter and Facebook while I spend my time in hot pants roller skating with my friends!

Claire D. Way of Boston (who is made of rubber and possibly super-human, btw)

working her way around a Gotham blocker. ECDX 2010 (photo by bjmacke)

In writing news, I'm plugging along on my shiny new project. I'm trying to take some creativity advice I got recently, which was to be disinterested. I know. What?  But first drafting is particularly painful to me. It's so hard to stare at a blank screen and a blinking cursor and try to get everything in my head onto a page. It's SLOW, especially when I want to get it right! But being disinterested means I'm going to sit down and just pour the scenes out of my brain, not caring if they're good or just right or if I spelled the character's last name the same way in chapter 3 that I did in chapter 1. That's what revision is for. I love revision! Tweaking and editing and shaping and molding is so fun for me, but I can't get there until I have the foundation written. So I'm trying to be disinterested in the first draft and simply get it out. So far, I'm finding the first draft to be going much quicker than last ones, because I'm not constantly stopping to be like, "Oh wait, I've spent four pages describing the house, that's way too much, I need to stop!" or worrying that the dialogue tags aren't JUST. SO. and that the jokes aren't funny yet.

"YET" being the operative word.

Oh, and don't forget. I'll be drawing the winner for the Future of Us ARC giveaway TOMORROW at noon, so get those last entries in quick!