eimarra | New month, new journal

When my daughter and husband went shopping for my birthday present two months ago, my daughter wanted to get me two journals. She was told just one, so she said she hoped Santa would bring me the other one for Christmas. Amazingly, he did.

The end papers are purple with a feather pattern, and the pages are lined — and the whole thing is so lovely, I’ve been reluctant to write in it, making my usual mess of the pages. This would be why most of my journals are simply college notebooks. However, that’s silly! My daughter wanted me to have the journal to use, after all.

So I’ve decided that I’ll use it for planning this new series I have in mind, steampunk with romance and adventure and every fantastic thing I can think of. (Current plan is to set the opening scene in Piper’s Opera House in Virginia City.) Character notes, settings, maps, cool things from other books that I want to riff on — all of it will go in here.

Which means today I am grateful for a thoughtful child, for beautiful tools to work with, and for the excitement that comes at the outset of a new project. What are you grateful for today?

Originally published at Erin M. Hartshorn. You can comment here or there.