I Write For Shutterfly

My days have become a well-oiled machine, right up until the point when I should be writing books.

Until that moment, my productivity is through the roof. Jake's homework each night includes a book with a very specific system: First I read it to him, then he reads it with me, then he reads it alone. Three times through, we read about naps and cats and hats and tops and Dot and Sam and Pom-Pom. Three times. And I get that baby done every night.

Laundry, as any mother knows, multiplies at a rate of three times the child squared by three times the sports he plays to the end of all time amen. And I'm almost totally on top of that equation. At the very least, I'm headed out of town soon, and the whole fam has clean underwear for the extent of my absence.

Everyone gets to their sports practice, supper eventually gets made, eaten, and cleaned up. I even exercise. It's through the roof, I tell ya! But then, after everyone is in bed, and it's novel-writing time, I don't. Not always anyway. Not usually. And even if I'm headed there. Even when I'm just about to click open those glaring, audacious blank pages just after the tens of thousands of words I actually have managed to write, then I get an email like this one, from Shutterfly: Free photo book. Ends tonight.

And then instead of a novel, I spend my evening uploading pictures for this:

Brothers: a photo book by me and by Shutterfly

Pages of history

First Day of School 2012

Can you blame me? I mean, I've got these faces for, like, a MINUTE. I've got all the time in the world to write books.