Bee-licious

When I saw this pair of bumblebees, headfirst in a thistle at 7 a.m. on a cloudy morning, I couldn't help thinking of the old drinking song we used to sing in high school:

Show me the way to go home
I'm tired and I want to go to bed.
I had a little drink about an hour ago
And it went right to my head.

I imagine that these guys (one of the nearly 500 species of native Texas bees) were so happy to find their delicious, nectar-laden thistle that they just dove right in, got tanked, and decided to spend the night rather than fly home. I'm sure the thistle didn't mind a bit.

Linda asked (in a comment) what happened to the junior Beatrix bio project, and wondered whether I was working on more than one book at a time. Re: the bio proposal, it's out there, being shopped around to seven or eight publishers by an agent who knows that particular market very well (having recently worked as an editor of children's non-fiction for one of the big NY houses). Oddly, I'm not feeling nervous, or even very curious about it. If there's a market, somebody will be smart enough to want to publish it. If all I get are rejections, I'll figure there's no market. If it goes on this first round, we'll know in maybe 3-4 weeks. If there's a second round, it may take another 2-3 months.

Re: one book at a time. Yes, basically. However, those of you who were hanging out here back in January might remember that I was staying in New Mexico working on a memoir--working title: Landscapes of Solitude. I brought back about 55,000 words with me, some 10,000 short of the planned length. There are some problems with the book, though. It's set in two places: here at MeadowKnoll and at a silent retreat community in South Texas. As a result, it feels as if it's chopped into two separate pieces that aren't held together very well. Or at least, that's how I felt when I stopped writing, sometime toward the end of January. I'm hoping that when I get back to the book (probably this fall), it won't feel that way. Or if it does, that my subconscious will have figured out a way to bridge the two sections. Or something. We'll see.

Anyway, I'm working on only one project right now, The Tale of Briar Bank, the fifth of the Cottage Tales. I got a bit of a start on it in March, before I headed out on book tour. Which is good, because it means I have something to work on. Today and yesterday, I wrote a scene between Beatrix and her mother that serves as a prologue to the book, setting up part of the conflict. I've now tacked the new prologue onto the opening chapter I'd already written. Not entirely sure where I'm going, but it's a start.

Reading note. In writing, you can make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, but first you have to create the sow's ear.--Charles Parnell

Comments

[clarice]

I love this picture of the bumble bee. It looks like it is in total bliss. I do hope someone pick up the junior biography. We would love it. Clarice