I'm procrastinating this morning. I have queries out to five agents looking for representation for my completed romantic mystery and I could be researching more agents. But I'm not. I have most of the first draft of a second novel finished--70K of a 75K goal--and I could be working on that. But my head's not in the writing game today.

In fact, I'm procrastinating on several things today. So, if I write it out, maybe I'll get myself in gear and do---something.

It could be the weather. In the Northwest, we went from wet winter to wet summer,  blowing completely past spring with only the lengthening days and blooming rhodies as proof that the seasons had changed. Today it is cool and gray, more like March or April than July. I'm still wearing fleece, for God's sake. I keep saying when the weather's better I'll do better.

On the other hand, I sat outside yesterday in fairly nice weather working a three foot puppet welcoming kids to Sand In The City, a major fundraiser for Kids on the Block, for which I am a volunteer puppeteer. It was a long four hours and my shoulder is tired. Could be that's it.

Maybe I'm avoiding prepping for the class I'm teaching next week. I do kiln-formed (fused) glass and have glass camp every day next week for half a dozen tweenies.

But that's not it, either. It's glass, all right. But not the tweenies. It's what's waiting for me in my workshop. I'm reproducing--more accurately, trying to reproduce--the glass pieces I described in my just-completed novel. The heroine/romantic interest is a glass artist and talks about or shows her work in several places in the book.

Here's the problem. I wrote a character who is a far better artist than I am and I'm intimidated by what she produced. If I go out to my workshop and open the kiln, I will find out if I succeeded in one phase of a multi-phase project I'm attempting to imitate Amanda's work. The last couple of times I've experimented, not so good. I fear that if I fail again I will have to give up the project, which I don't want to do, get to be a better glass artist which I'm not sure I can do or rewrite the book. Please God, not that one.

So far, to avoid opening said kiln, I have played multiple games of "Angry Birds," checked and weeded through my email, gone grocery shopping, read the paper and done the crossword puzzle and, now, have blogged about it.

And now, I just actually answered a phone call which was a survery of radio listening habits and I answered the questions instead of telling them I don't have time to listen. I have sunk to the bottom of the barrel, indeed. Time to go open the kiln.