In the startled wake of author L.K. Madigan's post about her diagnosis, I exchanged emails with several friends and one mentioned she was feeling very "carpe diem at the moment" and I thought so am I - in fact I've been feeling that way for the past month or so and it's time to just embrace it and accept carpe diem as a way of life.

Or to quote Dan Eldon, truly acknowledge that the journey is the destination.

I've gone through several carpe diem periods in my life (having cancer when you're 27 will do that to you) and I think I've gotten pretty good at incorporating a sense of significance into my life when it comes to personal relationships. I do not think I wasted a moment when my father was ill and I do not have regrets about his passing. (Other than the fact that I miss him so much that it sometimes hurts to breathe but I know that my brother and I were there for him in the best possible way every single moment.) Last year was a deep year for me when it comes to loss - my great uncle Ben passed away in October and with him went an entire generation. He was the last of my paternal grandfather's siblings. Then on New Year's Eve my great aunt Marion passed away and with her went the last of the Lennons. She was my maternal grandmother's last surviving sibling. These were the two family lines I was closest to all my life and now with my grandparents gone and all the aunts and uncles passed away, entire lines of my family tree have dropped off the map. I am glad that I was close to Uncle Ben and Aunt Marion until the end - they both knew how much I loved them - but still it makes me clutch the notion of carpe diem even closer. The pool of those who knew me when, who loved me then, gets smaller every year. I have to love everyone as much as I can while I can, seize the love when it is here.

You can never love everyone enough.

There is also though, and should be, carpe diem in how you live your professional life. This perhaps is toughest for me not because I don't make time for reading and writing but because I don't seem to do it all smartly. This is to say that I am, by my nature, best at list making and orderliness but running a business, homeschooling a child, dealing [lately] with the world's unruliest puppy and writing do not always mix. Everything gets away from me very quickly and what I have to clutch is the child and the daily accounting and getting the puppy out the door and the writing....well, the writing is always the easiest to postpone.

But I do write. Don't think that I don't. I just don't do it smartly.

Here's the thing. I read incredibly fast. Not as fast as some, but faster than lots. If I was just posting my informal thoughts on the blog about what I read then I don't think it would be a big deal but crafting short tight reviews for Booklist and longer thoughtful reviews for Bookslut is a lot tougher then what I do here. So books stack up as I slowly review them but keep adding to the pile as I quickly read them. This means I forget stuff (like how old a protagonist is) and I have to go back and look through noted pages, etc to remember what I wanted to write. And this slows me down and I just don't want to be slowed down in this fashion anymore.

It's a little thing, but I'd rather be doing writing instead of rereading before I write.

All of this leads to me making a list (of course) of just what it is that I am aiming for when it comes to writing. Consider this organizational carpe diem - the best way to seize the day in an orderly manner. I just don't want to leave something unwritten in my life - not one of the things that I'm really really wanting to write. And the only way to make sure that doesn't happen is to make it so I have time to work on those projects in the midst of everything else. Plus I'm just happier when I have a list. It gives me the illusion of control. (If only a list would get the puppy in line.....) So, here goes:

1. A review a day unless there are no books to review. (I read about five books at once so pretty much every couple of days there is one to review. I should note that I review months ahead though. I have my Feb column done, five books to review for March, a book for May and a book for July plus a standalone review for Bookslut as well. I also have comments to forward as part of the Cybils on three books and a book to blog about here. See how fast they stack up?)

2. I think I need to get Scrivener to help organize my notes for the next book. One of the things that bogged me down in MAP was keeping track of names (especially the history bits) and remembering what I mentioned where. (It all makes sense when you read it - promise!) I think Scrivener would save me a lot of time this go-round as again I am mixing contemporary and history and the lives of several different individuals. Anyone use Scrivener for the Mac? Pro/Con thoughts?

3. I have just finished another FL story but it needs to sit for a few days. I'm putting it down ("Looking for the Dead Girl on Tropical Trail" but I think that title will change) until the end of the month and then I'll give it a fresh look. This worked really well with the Jacksonville story and then I can send it out next month.

4. Which means I can start writing the next story now with a target date of mid-Feb to be done with it.

5. And getting back to my next book, I want the outline and first chapter ready to go next month to my agent. So I really need to get my pile of notes in order. Looking at them depresses me a lot because they are all over the place and I know I need to sift through them so I can see what I have and what I need. (And I know I need a lot more but not for the outline/framework.)

6. That would be the "get my shit together" note on this list in case you were wondering.

7. And I also have absolutely got to move books out of here on a regular basis. They will bury me if I'm not careful. Seriously. (This is sort of my "clean out the closets" item. I watch "Hoarders" and it freaks me out. I don't want to be found entombed in a bunch of Arcs!)

8. This one will be familiar to a lot of people - I need to stop reading crap. I'm not making a genre statement here, I mean books that just aren't all that great. I get sent a freak load of books every year and many of them sound pretty good and even start off pretty good but they aren't great and I need to just stop worrying about finishing everything that I've started. Sarah Weinman said pretty much the same thing the other day:

Too often I'd be on the subway or have some time to kill and would be stuck with a book that was good enough to finish, but not good enough to recommend. And mediocre books are the worst because there is nothing to say about them, either to friends, on Twitter or in a review for some venue or another, and thus it's better to say nothing. Why devote energy to meh books when there are so many very good and great books I'll never have time to read for the remainder of my life, even with this ridiculous and speedy ability?

It's a stupid small thing, but really - what the heck am I doing spending my life finishing a book I don't love? It's a waste of time. I don't need more than three or four great books in my column and I have a lot of books I want to read for my own pleasure or research and so what is my silly commitment to reading what I think I should read for my readers when it's not great? (My own brain is spinning at that one.) Seize the freaking day! That means read greatness, cast aside meh and move the hell on.

This is the item on my list that I am most excited about.

9. And what follows from all of that is simply to refocus my commitment to highlighting books that maybe you haven't heard about. There are a thousand blogs out there covering the big books and more power to them but for one reason or another I seem to have carved out a slightly odd niche in the reviewing world (especially when it comes to nonfiction). For awhile I felt a bit out of it and like I wasn't doing the job I should be doing and thus tried to cover some of the more anticipated titles (I'm talking for my column) but from now on, I'm not going to worry about it. I'm sure I'll be right there for some and miles away for others but I can't sweat it anymore. It's still all about books and that truly is wonderful enough.

10. This one is for blogging about my family history again. I was doing a pretty good job at it then got distracted but especially now with Uncle Ben and Aunt Marion gone, I feel like for my own self I need to get those stories out there. They are wonderful stories - and my mom really loves the ones from her family - and I shouldn't neglect them. My Aunt Marion in particular loved talking family history with me and I know she would want to make sure I kept at it. So no more putting that on the back burner; I need to write them here so I have them and so will everyone else in my family who might like to have them as well.

And that's it. My writing & reading carpe diem list. Wow. Now I'm going to go read a cooking magazine (which will never be blogged about) so I can rest my head. (I should note the cooking bit is worthy of a whole other goal-oriented list but I shall refrain!!!)