Chatting and potchking

Sam and I are having near-conversations now. It's the coolest thing ever. One of Sam's new things is being a "big boy." He asks to sit in "Sam's big boy chair" and pats his "big boy diaper." (Which by the way is useless. That's for another day.) He has also, it seems, decided he is too big a boy for napping. I'm still fighting the good fight though.

One of my favorite big boy things he's started doing as of last week is wanting to rock himself to sleep. He says "Sam rock self." So he climbs into the rocking chair and I sit on the footstool gently pushing his chair. Once he asked for "under doggy" but now seems to get it's not that kind of chair. The other night as he was dozing off he opened his eyes and looked at me drowsily: "Ball world. Fun mama. Fun soccerball. Cassie, Ella fun." I was so surprised that he'd remembered what we did that morning, and with who (whom?) and that he could verbalize it. Last night, same thing. He told me he had fun with his "toe in water. Sam's toe in the watah. Yeah. Fun with Mama." I love my little guy!

And an update from my other job: The day I got my encouraging rejection letter, I sent the query to another agent I'm interested in working with. The agency is in Portland which is a huge plus for me. She told me they didn't accept unfinished manuscripts but would be happy to look at it when it's finished. I took that as the "maybe" I needed and settled back into writing the book.

Then I read an interview Christina Katz did with Cory Doctorow in Writer's Digest. Turns out there's a word for what I've been doing with this whole attempt to acquire an agent prior to finishing the novel: potchking.

"But it's easy to tip over from daydreaming to making the daydream the main activity. Once you are taking the time you should be spending writing and using it researching technical questions about negotiating the fine details of your contract with your publisher–who as of yet doesn't exist because the book isn't written–you are no longer writing. You are potchking."

I recommend reading the whole article, but can't link to it online. It's an issue worth picking up with the whole scoop on getting an agent. But I'll save that stuff for later, like December 14th, the day after my book is due to be completed. Hmmm. I hear silence. Better go check on things.