Just back from my first Live Chat (with Meg Cabot) on the Readergirlz MySpace Forum.

My biggest concern was that I would forget or lose track of time and miss it. I wrote the event on my calendar, wrote a note to myself yesterday and posted it on my computer, and I set an alarm for 4:30 so that I could make a cup of tea, find my way to MySpace and the forum, and sneak in a post somewhere so I could see how the posting works. My plans to practice earlier in the month were foiled by the MySpace “waiting period”: you can’t post until you’ve been a MySpace member for a week. I guess it’s a lot like buying a gun.

The chat was great fun! Though I’ve never actually been to a cocktail party, and rarely attend parties at all, that’s how I’d describe the experience, except it was a cocktail party filled with people I actually wanted to talk to and with whom I had something to talk about.

There were a whole bunch of conversations going on at once, and I had some trouble juggling them, keeping up. Different clusters of folks chatted about different bookish and writingish things–and baking and weather and so on. Individuals went from group to group, conversation to conversation. I participated a little, but mostly I listened (i.e., read). I was always behind in the conversations, too, just like I am at in-person parties. I didn’t get my question to Meg in time to be answered because I was waiting to get to the end of posts to be sure I wasn’t repeating someone else’s question. I never got to the end! My sign-off post was the last of the evening. How appropriate is that? Always the straggler, the last one across the finish line. Actually, it’s a wonder I got it in under the wire. I zipped through some posts at the end when I noticed they were wrapping up.

Hats off to the Divas for sticking to a timeline. That’s much better than letting the event drag on to a natural death–always leave them wanting more.

So, yay! That was fun!

I learned a couple of cool things about Meg, too, like, for instance, she pounds out a first draft in a “few weeks.” And by “first draft” she means something she can present to her first readers and agent.

No ding-dong way!

Yes, way. I’m sure that after fifty-odd books Meg’s first drafts come out better than most, but still…a few weeks?!

Well, yeah. How do you suppose she got fifty-odd books under her belt? She claims she thinks about them for a long time before starting to write, as if that lessens the accomplishment.

She also writes on a laptop in bed, but I already knew that.

Are you aware that Meg has written under the pseudonym “Jenny Carroll”? Thanks to this chat, I know how that name came about, but it’s a secret, so I’m not saying. Too bad, so sad for you. Of course, you can go to the chat forum and find out for yourself if you’re so inclined.

I just finished A Northern Light, by Jennifer Donnelly, the January Readergirlz book. If I have Internet access for the January chat–and I might not–I’ll be there. I’m having trouble getting the next two books, but I have a little bit of time and am not giving up. If I don’t get them soon, though, I’ll be out of luck because I will be without mail in a few weeks.

What’s it like to have convenient access to a well-stocked library?