I did it. I booked New Mexico. http://www.unm.edu/~taosconf/

I’ve wanted to take a week-long workshop at this place for years and years and I’ve finally done it. My friend Michele Petersen went last summer and said it was amazing and has really helped her work. http://www.michelepeterson.com/ 

That clinched it. I decided I’m not waiting any longer.

If this current incarnation of my book was a house, it would look like one of those cobbled together remuddled jobs with lean-tos and funny dormer windows and door frames that have a bit of a tilt causing the door to stick.  I am tempted, too often, to tear the whole thing down and start over.

But I think it’s all required – the ripping and tearing and adding and shifting. I know, from all the work we’ve done on our cottage, it’s just necessary to live in a place for awhile, to really understand how it needs to be. To really get the sense of where the light comes in and how the chair fits best by that low window. I think this book is just getting that lived in feeling. Pretty soon, I’ll know where to put the skylights and why the door should be moved to the left to keep the wind out and how to straighten the stairway so it’s true and right.

My hope is that by the time I arrive in Taos in July, it’ll be solid enough to withstand the next round of suggested improvements. And then, if I’m going to take this metaphor and run it to it’s max,  there’s just the paint and the fine finishing…