#56 Drive an hour to see this thing.

To be honest, we didn't drive an hour just to see this.

We drove two hours to see butterflies and this thing just happened to be on the way.

It's called a Futuro. It's a house, if you can believe that, designed by a man in Finland in the 60s. Less than a hundred were made.

Our intended destination was The Butterfly House west of St. Louis, but an hour into that trip the youngest person in our family decided she'd had enough of the car.

So Fate gave us a reason to stop: gaudy roadside attractions along I-55 at Exit 37 in Livingston, IL. Here, the Pink Elephant Antique Mall displays some of the quirkiest examples of Americana to draw in customers for their wares. (In our case, we were drawn to the Twisty Treat Ice Cream also on location.)

No need to write at length on these monuments, the likes of which inspire writers of newspaper columns, magazines and blogs.  We summer road-tripping Americans love our kitsch.

And we did, eventually, see our butterlies.

#55 Plan summer road trips you will probably only take in your imagination since gas prices continue to hover around $4/gallon.

Route 66
Eric Polk, Wikimedia Commons

My mom may have taught me to love books— I've mentioned as such many times in my writing—but my dad was the one who taught me to love travel.

My parents divorced before I was old enough to care. Later, I did care. A lot. Then I got over it again.

That's the short version of that story.

So when I was a kid, summer meant getting to spend more than a weekend at a time with my dad. And almost every year, it meant a family vacation. Sure, I went on trips with my mom and grandparents sometimes, but without my dad I would not have experience The Family Vacation, the one where the parents and kids all pile in the minivan and drive for hours (and hours) and stay in hotels and swim and go to the beach and see very important American sites like The Alamo, and The Washington Monument, and Disneyworld.

Back then, traveling meant driving. I didn't get on a plane until I was in my twenties. Now I travel with my very own family that I get to see every day, not just on the weekends, and let me tell you: we fly to most of our destinations. But this summer, we have an infant, and I have now experienced enough plane rides to know that the vast majority of infants do not like plane rides.

Travel this summer will mean driving, and as I have a newfound interest in my home state, it will probably mean not driving very far.

So instead of writing, I spend my mornings looking at maps and browsing Illinois travel websites, something I do with great joy. Planning trips is one of my favorite things to do. "Armchair travel," I believe it's called. Planning a trip is just as fun as the actual traveling. (Possibly more fun, since planning never involves things like whining children or road construction.)

And if we do hit the road this summer, I will take my notebook and my laptop with very serious intentions to write along the way. So....yeah. We all know how that will work out, don't we?

#54 Start two new blogs, because...why not?

Home Office by Carlos Porto

I started this blog two years ago to combat my utter fear of never seeing my writing in print anywhere, ever. This one desperate act led to more experiments writing web content, and soon I was blogging regularly as well as providing content for sites like Associated Content, Yahoo! Contributor Network, and Demand Media.

I call myself a fiction writer. It's right there in my profile: I'm "currently writing a novel for young adults." Yeah, I've currently been writing a novel for four years, ever since I quit teaching, and who knows how many years I will currently be writing that novel.

The truth is, writing fiction is hard for me. I love dreaming of stories, jotting down notes, forming plot outlines. When it comes time to actually write fiction, however, I'm usually thinking up ways to avoid it.   

Yet it's nothing for me to write in my journal for hours. Much of what I write ends up as content for an article or a blog post. I suppose blogging is a natural fit for me. I've come to love blogging as much as I do keeping my personal journal.

A few months ago, I put together a photo ebook with Nathan's photos from our trip to Oahu in February of 2010. Making the book was so much fun, I knew I wanted to make more. I planned another project around Illinois landscapes, because Nathan already had plenty of photos I could work with.

So that was how two more blogs came about:

PhotojourneyBooks.com, which I've already mentioned on here, and NotChicagoIllinois.com, which sprang from my photo ebook idea about Illinois landscapes.

At the very least, I have a better chance of engaging readers with my blogs than with the novel I'm currently writing avoiding.

#53 Watch the entire series of Freaks and Geeks on DVD.

Far too little writing was accomplished last week. Instead, I spent most of my time rocking a sleeping infant. Babies don't stay babies forever, you know. And she is just so sweet when she's sleeping.

But in the interest of multi-tasking, I also watched the early TV appearances of James Franco, Jason Segel, Seth Rogen, et al, in the first--and only--season of Freaks and Geeks. Thank goodness it only aired for one season. Otherwise, I would have spent weeks watching the entire series like I did with Six Feet Under. Or Dexter. Or Buffy. Or True Blood, Fringe, Vampire Diaries. Need I go on? You get it. I like TV.

Watching a television series on DVD (or TiVo or Netflix streaming, whatever) is the way to go. No commercials, no waiting around until next week to see what happens. In fact, it seems that not as many viewers are watching TV shows as they air, since the networks seem so desperate for live viewers these days.

The downside of watching full seasons of television programs at one time is that it leads to an all-consuming involvement with said TV show. (Case in point: my obsession with Lost.) As justification, I tell myself I'm learning about storytelling from these critically-acclaimed shows; and many of them do have excellent examples of plotting, story arcs, character, etc. But the truth is, I just love television. I sometimes take television very seriously, as do some of my favorite TV critics.

Also, while rocking a baby, it's just so much easier to watch TV than it is to juggle a notebook or a laptop. If I'm ever going to get any writing done, I suppose I'm going to have to put the baby down once in awhile, aren't I?

#52 Make a very serious, very determined resolution to write at least 1,000 words a day.

Here's the thing: I am a great planner. I have journals and lists and outlines and goals and timetables all written out clearly and thoroughly down to the last detail. However...when it comes to the essential follow-through, taking action to bring these plans to fruition...well, not so much of the enthusiasm comes through, to say the least.

It was going so well, the plan to write 1,000 words a day. I accomplished this feat for most of last year. Really, I did. I even completed a draft of my novel and celebrated accordingly.

Then I read it.

Huh. Turns out, 1,000 words a day adds up to a lot of less-than-stunning narrative. Actually, it adds up to a lot of less-than-coherent narrative.That was last November. I put my novel away and didn't bring it out again until, oh...two weeks ago.

I should have learned my lesson about setting a stringent word count. Instead, I once again recommited to writing 1,000 words a day until a revision of my novel was finished. I made this resolution on Monday and threw myself into it with fresh verve. It is now Friday, and I have....wait, let me count....1,012 words.

I know plenty of authors that live by the 1,000 words a day rule. Carolyn See recommends writing 1,000 words a day in Making a Literary Life and I have tried to do absolutely everything Carolyn See suggests in that book. But right now, just the idea of having to write 1,000 words a day makes me to want to avoid writing altogether. Otherwise, my 1,000 words a day are going to add up to another terrible draft.

Of course, zero words a day adds up to a lot of nothing.

#51 Begin new creative endeavors.

Hey there! As one of the handful of readers of my blog, you have probably noticed I've been on extended haitus. I assure you it was justified as I had many tasks on my plate including GIVING BIRTH. All is well, and my happy family now has a new addition which delights us as well as deprives us of sleep/extended writing time.

Thank goodness that the Universe in its synchronicity and infinite wisdom sent this message to me via my inbox from the novelist (and mother) Sarah Jio, guest blogging on Writer Unboxed.

Sarah writes, "Yes, it is possible to write a novel with small children hanging on you...Let me paint a picture for you: 4 year old nagging for a snack at my right, a 2 year old drooling on my contract for my next novel at my left (oops—hope my agent didn’t notice the smeared type on page 4!), and a newborn on the brink of a meltdown in the bouncer seat at the base of my desk. That’s the general state of the union in my home, and I learned early on as a mom that if I couldn’t embrace the chaos and just write, I’d never get a book published."

Well, I haven't found that balance yet as you can tell from the frequency of my recent blog posts. And yet I HAVE found time for yet another collaboration with my husband Nathan. I started playing around with creating photo books last year and made one on Shutterfly for Nathan as a Christmas gift--his photos, my words. I enjoyed creating so much that I wanted to make some more and so...wah lah!...a photo ebook Images of Oahu: Honolulu, Waikiki Beach, and the North Shore which you can download from our spanking-new website PhotojourneyBooks.com.

The website is a work-in-progress, as is my new life as a writer and mother of not one but TWO girls. Yikes. Wish me luck.