I might as well admit it: September 1st is creeping ever closer. It is now, in fact, LOOMING. Which means that I should be finished with at least the first draft of this novel. I mean, I don’t think that editors are going to come to my house and seize my laptop or anything…but I would like to have something finished by then. I want to have written THE END at least once.

But then, because one cannot write all the time, I discovered the blog of Joshilyn Jackson here, a verrrrry funny writer who is also on deadline for a novel and so has declared July National PJ Month. How funny is that! Here I was, celebrating National PJ Month too, and thought I was the only one who can’t get dressed anymore and who wanders the house muttering to invisible fictional beloveds.

So today, being Saturday, I bounded out of bed and rejoiced just a little that my family members all had Exciting Things To Do that didn’t involve me, and that I could sit around in my PJs and write, write, write my little heart out.

But instead it turned out to be one of those days ruled by the crazy hamsters who live inside my head, the ones that think anything I’m currently doing is not the right thing at all. I hate those guys!

So far I’ve swept half the kitchen, ruled out going to the gym, started a letter to my stepmother, read five pages of the second pass of the edited manuscript for Kissing Games of the World (due at the end of the week), read the first three pages of the new novel I’m writing and turned the first chapter into a prologue and then changed it back, talked on the phone to my friend Deb for a half hour, read four pages in a book about publicizing books and decided to learn how to make a book trailer and a podcast, checked out three new writers’ blogs, set up a special bookmarking section for publicity sites, read the weatherbug to see when this heat and humidity will lift (answer: never), answered five emails, watered all the plants on the porch that could be watered with one fill-up of the watering can, petted the dog, ate five grapes, contemplated getting dressed and getting a haircut, ruled that out, contemplated cutting my own hair without getting dressed. And now I am blogging.

Heaven help me, but September first REALLY is going to come, and I’m already exhausted.