Whew. I’ve been slacking on the blog, but I have a plethora of good excuses.

First, thanks to my daughter’s playground fall, I’ve spend a total of eight hours in the Children’s Hospital ER in the past week. We went from 5 p.m. to 11 p.m. one night while they decided whether her elbow was broken (yes) and whether to do surgery (no). Then we went back a few days later from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. while they put on a cast. Good times.

Along with learning about elbow bones, I learned that anyone in need of a little drama should hang out in the ER. There were crying babies and crying moms and twisted ankles and severe fevers and everything in between.

That’s only my first excuse.

Second one: I went with my daughter and her newly plastered arm to see Annie Barrows on Tuesday night. She’s the author of the Ivy and Bean books (which my daughter loves) and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (which I love).

I always enjoy hearing how other writers work. According to Annie, it takes six months to write an Ivy and Bean book. The first draft takes a month, then she puts it away for a couple weeks. Then she rewrites, and puts it away for a couple weeks. Then she might rewrite again. When she’s finished, she sends it to her editor… then rewrites again. She said one book took nine rewrites.

Nine rewrites to create a chapter book. Yikes! But there must have been a hundred little girls lined up for her autograph. If that doesn’t inspire you to rewrite, what would?

She also mentioned that she’s not working on a children’s book at this exact moment, because there’s a new grown-up book in progress. This made me happy and my daughter unhappy.

I have a third excuse.

Has anyone else noticed how long this blog past has become, though? I think I’ll make my next excuse tomorrow. Because if one can combine excuses with procrastination… well, isn’t that the secret to the whole writing life?