So! I’ve been at the NYC teen authors festival, and there are so many fantastic people there that you should definitely run and check out the next events — unfortunately I’ll be working Saturday, and I have nothing to sign for the signing on Sunday but I may get out there anyway.

Today there were a number of panels at NYPL, and I was on the debut author panel with Ebony Wilkins, Angie Frazier, and Alyssa Sheinmel. I will for sure be looking forward to their books.

Just before the panel, I leaned over to my sister and whispered, “I think David Levithan is wearing my shoes!”

You see, I have extremely large feet. I generally wear a women’s 12. But there are a lot of manufacturers whose 12s don’t fit me, especially manufacturers who make formalish shoes rather than sneakers. So when I got out of college and stopped wearing New Balance sneakers every day, I mostly switched over to men’s hiking shoes. And when I have a more formal occasion to go to but don’t want to wear my Girl Shoes, I wear my Fluevogs. (Yes, I know Fluevog makes women’s shoes up to size 12. Their twelves are too small for me too. I am so sad.)

And David Levithan was wearing the same shoes (but in black, otherwise it would have been awkward).

For a huge-footed girl, this feels kind of like a fashion triumph.

Cass in A Love Story Starring My Dead Best Friend is a cyclist. Me, not so much, especially in high school. Raleigh, North Carolina, has its share of cyclists, and on weekends you can see spandex-clad packs zooming down the sides of highways. But it’s a city that’s built for cars. Big houses on big lots, strip malls, cul-de-sacs. There wasn’t so much as a gas station within two miles from my house, and it was seventeen miles to high school… seventeen miles on the bus, even when I was a senior. I didn’t get my driver’s license until I was 25.

The freedom that I wanted, when I was in high school, was nothing more than the freedom to go to the mall, the bookstore, the library, without waiting for a parent to be able to shuttle me around.

It wasn’t until I went to grad school in Chapel Hill, NC that I fell in love with cycling. They had a pretty good bus system, and I used it a lot… well, that was the year I broke my arm and then my ankle, so I had to. On my bike, I could get to school! I could get to the grocery store! I could get to the mall, sometimes, though it was five miles away and up a really steep hill!

There’s this new blog I’ve been reading, Amsterdamize. It’s trying to raise these questions of how we can integrate bikes into our daily lives, so that they’re not just a fun weekend toy for people who like to wear spandex, but a valid method of transportation, for running errands, for going to school, for going to work. In a lot of cities, that’s really hard to do because of the sprawl or the bad bike lanes or just the attitudes of drivers towards cyclists. But rolling down a hill with the wind in my face is one of the best things in the world. It’s good for me, it’s good for the environment… so why not try to move towards a world where that’s easier, and safer, and more convenient?

I keep telling people that I wrote six novels before A Love Story Starring My Dead Best Friend. I’m not sure that’s true. I think I wrote four full novels and, two years I participated in NaNoWriMo, two half-novels that didn’t have enough energy behind them to be really worth finishing. In any case, my computer crashed, I didn’t back up well, and most of what I’ve written has been consigned to the little “trash” folder in the sky. But anyway.

People are a little bit surprised, sometimes, that I was willing to write four-and-two-halves bad novels and keep on going. What did it mean? Dedication, perseverance, optimism?

Not optimism. The people who know me will confirm that I can panic over absolutely anything, that I usually have to be pulled back from the worst-case-scenario running through my head. I stopped believing I would ever be published years before I wrote Love Story.

But I didn’t stop writing.

I mistrust doing anything with my hopes pinned on what’s going to happen in the future, or what other people are going to think of me. I trust what I can see in front of me right now: it’s an idea that’s worth digging up. It’s a story that’s worth telling. It’s sitting in front of the computer and making myself work the problem instead of watching the Daily Show or playing Bejeweled.

I may not always believe in myself. But I believe in the work in front of me.

I find that I naturally cycle through head-work and hand-work. In college, when I was coming down from the rush of finals and term papers, I’d pick up a craft project or a musical instrument. Not that these things don’t require intelligence and concentration; they just don’t require the same kind of brain work as writing six pages on The Importance of Being Ernest.

So I handed in revisions on Wednesday, and promptly went into a round of nesting.

When I’m writing, I have a habit of letting things… accumulate. I did not do a precise inventory of my computer desk last week, but I can say I had two plates, a bowl, some glasses, a couple bottles of Coke and other snack-related trash, three partial manuscript printouts, hairbrush, hair conditioner, four or five books — there is probably more than that. When I’m ready to get down to work, the writing is more important. And when I’m not ready to get down to work, I’d rather play Pokemon or watch TV than clear off the huge piles on my desk.

But they’re clear now, and I’m all ambitious about putting shelves in my closet and hanging up some art. At some point, though, I really should figure out how to get into the habit of cleaning at times when I haven’t just finished some major project.

I am writing again. Always disappointed that the apostrophe is so far to the right, typing nine-fingered, but writing; and on schedule to finish a first draft by the end of February if all goes well, if I don’t have surgery.

Really there’s no reason why I should have to finish a draft by the end of February, and it probably won’t make any difference in the long term whether I get operated on before or after I finish a draft, but I’m getting twitchy about having enough time.

I hope to resume posting (not to mention writing!) soon; I broke a finger last night and my cast is giving me a hard time with the typing.

I have no doubt that I’ll change my mind about this a lot when it isn’t October any more. But right now, on this day, I can say with absolute certainty that October is my favorite month.

There is something comfortable in the way it’s after sunset by the time I get off work, in the chill in the air that makes me wear fingerless gloves indoors and needles me to put the kettle on. It’s weather for drinking tea and curling up in bed with a book — right now I’m reading Graceling by Kristin Cashore, which is an excellent book to read in bed with a cup of tea.

This is the weather that makes me feel like I don’t have to bother with running around every which way getting things done.

I do, unfortunately, have to bother with running around every which way getting things done; I’m starting an apartment hunt this weekend and intend to finish it this weekend. But tonight I can stare at the dark outside my window and listen to the trains roll past.

Note to self: the trains rolling past are loud. Try an apartment further from the tracks this time?