ROW80 check-in: Snow and Frida

If I were writing as fast as the snow were falling, I'd have a novel this afternoon! Instead, I'm watching weather reviews (more snow predicted), swaddled in blankets, and trying to stay on schedule despite another nasty cold. So this week's check-in will be truly short.

WRITING:  Over 700 words for 4 out of 7 days. Maybe later tonight. Still waffling between working on two major drafts at the same time. Blogged twice (big improvement). Wrote on the writing blog about self-published writers and give-aways.

READING/COMMUNITY: Two beta reads pending. I'm reading nonfiction the rest of this week Alison Alexander's The Ambitions of Jane Franklin, and it's a wonderful, clearly written bio of an exceptional woman (the wife of Arctic explorer John Franklin).

MARKETING: Don't know if this is direct or indirect, but I've got one book club reading scheduled for April, a guest blog interview set up for mid-March and have reached out to an interesting site called the Author Alliance and The Masquerade Club. Both review historical fiction. Queries pending. I finally took the plunge and called a wonderful local book store and now am scheduled for a book signing (my first) mid-April. They were so nice with very clear guidelines that now I wonder why I waited so long.

So much of marketing requires advance planning and commitments. Tenacity. All very different from the writing process. Perseverance furthers.

Now, in honor of Women's History Month, the entire month of March, here's a screen CAPTCHA of the most influential artist, a woman who faced tremendous physical and social barriers to become Mexico's first surrealist painter. An icon to many, Frida Kahlo began painting while bedridden. She painted herself again and again, throughout her short life. If you look at photographs of her, you can see an innocence in her early years, slowly transformed to deep sadness. But her life and her art have inspired many, including me, to see what is possible.

I was lucky enough to have visited her studio in Mexico City, to walk through the rooms where she once painted. Large windows looked out on an equally large patio below, gardens as they once were. Easy to dream that she still lives.