It’s rare to find a person these days who isn’t always busy. Our lives are full, full, full. I’ve been in the situation where I was so busy it was overwhelming, and I had to start chucking some of my responsibilities so I could continue to do the ones I still had well. But this week I’m busy, and I’m finding it’s the good kind. I started revisions on my Intrigue Monday, then got two calls that afternoon for freelance editing/writing projects. I could have freaked out and yelled, “But I want to work on my revisions!” Instead, I just juggled the schedule a little and still can get those revisions done in a timely fashion. Plus, I’m thankful for the freelance work, especially since I took advantage of a big sale over the weekend and ordered a new laptop from Dell to replace my dying-a-slow-death, old laptop.

The key to “busy” not turning ugly is the ability to know when to say “no”. This is something I’ve struggled with throughout my life when it comes to work and volunteer activities. I like to help people, to contribute. But here’s the thing — if you do too much, you’ll burn out, mentally and physically. It’s better to do a few things really well than a bunch of stuff halfway. The world is stressful enough without us adding to that stress by overloading ourselves. So, look at your to-do list and decides what’s really important and either chuck or postpone the rest. Perhaps that’s the biggest gift you can give yourself this holiday season.

I was plugging along on my revisions yesterday, knowing I needed to put in some more interview scenes for my investigator. I already had a couple of characters who needed some more suspicion attached to them as red herrings, but my new scene didn’t come from those characters. Out of the blue, another character walked in and demanded some suspicion. I’m hopeful it works. I think it would make sense to interview this person as he had something to lose by not committing the crime. So, I write this new scene and it ends up being 10 pages, which necessitated a bit of juggling with where one chapter ended and another began so I didn’t have the world’s longest chapter.

Have you ever had this happen — either a character or a scene popped up out of nowhere?

And let me just say — juggling red herrings and clues so that you end up with a villain that wasn’t obvious but makes sense in retrospect is not as easy as one might think. It’s like trying to untangle a mass of Christmas lights with your brain without benefit of your hands.

All that windy, stormy weather yesterday brought the temperature back down. About 20 degrees cooler today. Good thing revisions keep me indoors and I’m not tempted by warm, sunny weather.

No matter where you live, you’ve probably said something like, “Hey, if you don’t like the weather, wait two minutes and it’ll change.” That saying could apply to the past four days. On Friday morning, when I got up with the chickens to go to Wal-Mart, it was 16 degrees. Today, it’s in the 60s, possibly 70, and really, really windy. We’re under a tornado watch until 6 p.m., nearly six hours from now. I’m hoping the mailbox doesn’t blow down the street with my bill payments in it. I took a work break earlier and went for a walk around our cul de sac several times while listening to a conference workshop. I take every warm opportunity to get outside during what is normally cold weather. Today’s walk hopefully burned off more calories than usual because I was walking into very gusty wind half the time. Of course, the other half had it pushing me down the opposite side of the street.

Breezy walk over, I returned to Intrigue revisions, which I began this morning. I’m up to Chapter 3 in the initial read-through/note-taking phase. I’m putting all my scenes on colored index cards as suggested by Lisa Gardner in the online class I’m taking. Hopefully that way I’ll be able to spread all those scenes out in front of me and be better able to eyeball where the new red herrings, clues and scenes need to go.

So, how do you approach revisions if you’re a writer?

Ho ho ho! It’s the annual weekend of decorating the house for Christmas. After spending a few days out of state visiting the hubby’s family for Thanksgiving, we arrived home yesterday in time to drag lots of decorations out of the attic, put on the Christmas music CDs and start decorating. The inside is done, and I plan to tackle the outside lights today before it starts raining again. My friend Mary beat me to a Christmas decorating post yesterday, but hey, there are never too many pictures of holiday decorations.

Here’s a little Christmas tour through the inside decorations.

An animated Santa given to us by hubby’s parents a few years ago greets anyone who steps in the front door.

The Nativity sits in a different spot this year. Since we’ve closed off the back of our house to save on our natural gas bills this year, the Nativity is now sitting on top of an end table in the front living room rather than atop the entertainment center in the den.

This Irish angel is one of tons of Christmas ornaments I’ve collected over the years. I have so many that I normally decorate two trees and still have ornaments left over. This year, because of closing off the den, we only have the one big tree in the front window. So tubs of ornaments went back into the attic.

Two of my favorite decorations are my Ice Sculptures figurines. I got these at a big Christmas store in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, next to the Great Smoky Mountains. I could spend a fortune I don’t have in that store. The figurine above is called There’s Snow Place Like Home. And the one below is Heaven and Nature Sing.

No kitchen is complete without a seasonal cookie jar. Isn’t this guy adorable?

Part of my Bearfoots collection that only comes out once a year is sitting atop the TV. It’s called The Perfect Tree.

I wish I could take better pictures of what the lights look like, but here’s the slice of the living room that has the big tree, the lighted snowmen around the window and the stair railing wrapped in garland and lights.

I love this time of year because of all the festivities. It makes the cold bearable. Happy Holidays and Happy Decorating to all of you who’ll be pulling out the seasonal decor soon.

There are a ton of things I’m thankful for. They’re the things you usually see in “I’m thankful for” lists: family, friends, health, freedom, etc. So I’m going to give a tongue-in-cheek (or perhaps it’s better described as fork-in-mouth) list of the top 10 foods for which I’m thankful since today is a day centered around eating. So, in no particular order:

10. Chocolate cake
9. Pumpkin pie
8. Lemon meringue pie
7. Grilled shrimp
6. Cheese fries
5. Chocolate Extreme Blizzards at Dairy Queen
4. Chick-Fil-A chicken sandwiches
3. Strawberries (by themselves or chocolate-covered)
2. Fried mushrooms
1. Cheese enchiladas (I’m adding nachos too since they come before the enchiladas.)

So, if you had to list your 10 favorite foods you’re thankful for, what would they be?

Thankfully, last night I finished up the big freelance editing project I’ve been doing because I got an e-mail from one of my critique partners this morning that she’s finished going through my Intrigue-targeted manuscript. This means I’m headed back to Revision Island for the foreseeable future, trying to whip this romantic suspense manuscript into shape so my agent can send it back to the editor who liked it but wanted some specific revisions before looking at it again.

I’m so thankful I have the Christmas shopping done, the presents wrapped, the cards addressed. I knew these revisions would hit about the time all that stuff needed to be done, so I did it early — which had the added bonus of being able to shop while it was warm outside.

Well, if I ever get a wild hair to go to grad school, I’ll know I’ve been on the right track…

You Should Get a PhD in Liberal Arts (like political science, literature, or philosophy)

You’re a great thinker and a true philosopher. You’d make a talented professor or writer.

Since we had a really nice, warm, long fall this year, I took the opportunity to clean out the space between our back fence and the drainage ditch that separates the houses on our street from the ones on the street behind us. I’d usually work on my writing and other computer-related duties in the mornings, then take a break in the middle of the day when it was warmest to work outside on the slaying of weeds, getting some needed exercise and soaking up some sunshine at the same time. This project had been begging to be tackled since we moved in five years ago, but until this year, I’d not had the time. After working all day at the magazine, the last thing I’d wanted to do when I came home was clean out a fence row. Plus, I needed those post-day job hours for my own writing and other necessary home tasks.

There are still a few things to do back there, but it looks a zillion times better. I can actually see traffic on the street behind our property now.

This is what the strip looked like before I tackled the weeds, briers and small trees:

And after a couple of weeks (in which you can tell the leaves on our sycamore tree turned brown and blew off their limbs), this is what the same area looked like:

The green you see down at the end is the beginning of our neighbor’s property. Hey, maybe he’ll get a wild hair and clean out the back of his lot.

I still have work to do. There are roots to dig out and grass to sow so we can mow this strip and keep it weed-free, but that’ll have to wait until spring. Cold weather has arrived, and this chick is not a cold weather fan. I have become Fleece Woman, and I’ll likely remain so until April.

Writing news: I finished writing and editing the synopsis for my new women’s fiction book last night and typed in those edits this morning. Then I sent the partial off to my agent for a read-through.

I have finally had that brainstorm guaranteed to make me a bazillionaire. All I have to do is invent the Synopsizer — a machine into which writers can feed their manuscripts and receive a fabulous synopsis in return. I’d be richer than Oprah, richer than Bill Gates! If only it were that easy. As you might have guessed, I’m writing a synopsis tonight on my new women’s fiction novel so I can send the partial to my agent. And although this is manuscript number fifteen or so, I’m still left with the age-old question among writers — why are synopses so darned difficult to write? It’s way easier to write the entire 300-plus pages of the book than to write the 10 or so pages nutshelling that story. Whoever first coined the term “sucknopsis” got it right.

But in good news, I came home from my RWA chapter meeting today to find a fun e-mail from my agent. She’d just finished reading my newest young adult manuscript and loved it, every bit of it, so much so that she’d already sent it off to the editor who requested it before I even got home. That sure was a “make me smile” moment.

Okay, off to read through the newly minted synopsis to see how hideous it truly is.

The past couple of weeks, I’ve been bummed out by the people voted off of Survivor — my fave Brandon, then Bobby Jon. But this week, things finally got shaken up a bit and Jamie, “Mr. I’m Losing My Mind in the Jungle”, got ousted, much to the surprise of Judd. Tee hee. Very interesting that Steph turned on Jamie and didn’t tell her pal Judd. Hmm…

So, Survivor fans, any bets on who is going to walk away with the cool million? At this point, my favorites (not necessarily who I think will win) are Cindy, Rafe and Danni. I like Gary too, but since he’s a former NFL player, I’m kind of rooting for the other three a little more. I like Lydia fine, but she’s not one of my favorites. Plus, she’s just so bad at challenges. I think that’s how she’s gotten this far — she hasn’t been a threat at challenges. But here’s the thing — people might start to think more (as Gary suggested tonight) that Lydia might be pretty hard to beat in the final two.

I watched LOST tonight, the episode where they showed what happened to the survivors from the tail section of the plane. I think my most burning question is who the heck are The Others? Any theories? I admit, I’m stumped. Something one of the characters (who turned out to be one of The Others) said tonight sounded Rapture-esque (as in the biblical Rapture). When Ana Lucia asked why certain people were taken, particularly the kids, he said the good ones were taken and that they were fine and in a better place. Still, not sure those scary dudes on the boat who took Walt looked very heavenly to me though.

Well, the storm system that blew through last night brought colder weather. Yesterday, I went walking while it was in the 70s. Tonight, we’re supposed to dip to about 21. Brrr. So not my kind of weather.

I made good progress today on the NEXT-targeted book — a little more than 12 pages. I’d thought I’d finish Ch. 3, but I still have a little bit of a scene left and my brain is too tired to complete it tonight. I’ll save it until the morning when my mind is fresh. Still on target to get my partial to my agent by the end of the week though.