Quote de jour
"A squirrel leaping from bough to bough, but making the wood one wide tree for his pleasure, fills the eye not less than a lion-- is beautiful, self-sufficing,and stands then and there for nature."
                                                                                                                                    ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

A squirrel in my front yard mid-scratch


I wouldn't dream of talking on a cell phone while driving. It's too distracting, not to mention illegal. Oddly enough, I can write while driving and often do. I don't know why, but driving on the familiar, hilly curves of my leafy neighborhood makes for it easy for me to write dialogue. I take a long time to flesh out fiction characters. Spending time with them while driving alone is a useful step before committing them to paper. All bets are off though in less familiar territory. I'm totally neurotic driving somewhere new.

Not much plotting or writing got done in the car today. Blame the squirrels for distracting me. There were so many flattened carcasses, I lost count. Seriously, six or eight within ten minutes. Maybe it was the full moon. Maybe they were too focused on gathering nuts. Maybe it was an omen. One of my characters once said that they sometimes felt like a squirrel that didn't make it across the road. I have to re-think that.