Yes, I’ve been AWOL from my website for a while. I’m a better Twitter-er than I am a blogger. Not sure why, but I’m sure it has something to do with me being an instant-gratification-kind-of person (e.g. I’d rather go buy a cup of coffee than wait while it brews, and by the time the previews are over at a movie, I’m ready to go home). But anyway, the reason it’s been so long since I’ve posted anything on here is because I’ve been off Nuclear Summit-ing at my day job.

I’ve worked on big international summits before, usually doing the stuff that gets the most attention like the food, coffee, and hotels (Just kidding! I do whatever I’m told.  😀 ) — but this time I actually got to be the overall site coordinator, which was huge. Millions of dollars in contracts and people to manage.

It’s definitely one of the toughest challenges I’ve ever faced.

Now here’s the weird part: While at the Nuke Summit, I discovered that writing is about 100 million times harder than my day job. It was funny — people would walk up and say:

“Are you okay, Miranda?”  “Can we get you something to eat, Miranda? You look so busy and tired.” “Can we help with anything, Miranda?”

Me: Thinking about this book I’m writing is making my brain hurt. It might dissolve into liquid goo.

Them: Um, okay.

Me: By the way, you hung the Ukrainian flag upside down.

Sure, coordinating a big event requires me to pay attention to an obscene amount of details. Writing is just like that. It’s getting all the major players and pieces in place, and then making sure they work together.

If I don’t pay attention to every single last word, I might end up with an upside-down character.

To put it all into perspective: I think I had several hundred little things to worry about at the Nuclear Summit.

With a 70,000-word novel, that’s 70,000 little details to worry about.