Guts and nerves

In celebration of Bobbie Burns’s birthday yesterday, we acquired, cooked, and ate a haggis. There’s a place out in Maple Ridge that makes ‘em, and a place in Vancouver that sells ‘em (frozen). Considering that it looked like this:

Haggistastic!

…it was actually quite edible. Also: full of organ meats and suet. Leftover haggis the next day was ROCK HARD, due to high suet content. Not for everyday use, methinks, but good every once in a while, as a side dish, alongside Tatties and Neeps.

Tomorrow I drive to Seattle, eat with some publishing people, spend the night, and come back Monday after lunch. I’m to be there for the announcement (Monday morning) of all the major US children’s book awards, and then give a little speech (win or lose). I confess to being slightly nervous. OK, slightly more than slightly.

Scott (who believes awards are a referendum not on my book but on the jurors) (and he has a point) set me up with voice recognition software, which is proving both useful and difficult. It’s very useful for editing; it’s like I just think the changes (out loud) and they appear. Composing is rather another story. I freeze up. I’m learning ways around this, such as turning my back on the computer screen so I can’t see how stupid I sound, and trying to remind myself that first drafts are always bad.

Dictated first drafts, however, are a few degrees worse. Still. It puts crap on the page, and I can turn that into writing. That is always the order of things, just not quite so self-consciously.

And who’s to say but that some of this isn’t award-jitter-nerves leaking through as well? Maybe once I’ve officially lost (or not lost) I can go back to not feeling quite so stared-at, even when I’m all alone, talking to no one.

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