by Valerie Alexander

March has been a very exciting month for me.  I carefully plotted it out – publish the book on the 15^th, spend five day promoting it heavily, then for the next nine days focus mostly on the TV series I’m pitching on the 30^th.  That was the plan anyway.

Let’s start with the obvious – Happiness as a Second Language is not coming out on the 15^th.  The fault is all mine.  I dithered over things I should have been decisive about, and made a few incorrect choices regarding priorities, and ideally it will come out a week later, on the 22^nd.  Fingers crossed.

Then, I looked at my calendar and realized the 30^th is a Saturday, and for those not familiar with Hollywood – nobody takes meetings on Saturday.  Or Sunday.  Or holidays.  Or the week in which the holiday happens.  And, of course, not during Cannes, Sundance or Toronto, then there’s Oscar season and the High Holy Days and the month of August and it soon becomes clear why there are exactly six days of the year when Hollywood works, and Saturday, March 30^th is not one of them.

So I sent a note to the assistant who set the meeting, just to clarify, and he replied, “Yeah, that was a typo.  The meeting is the 20^th.  See you next week.”

THE 20^TH??

As in, six days from now?

Um…okay.

So here I am, determined to get this book on the virtual shelves by the 22^nd, and to write, memorize and rock this pitch and sell the series (it’s a really cool series…I hope you get to see it someday), and not embarrass myself with either endeavor.

I think my movie muse just went from “Working Girl” to “Sleepless in Seattle.”

Either that or, “The Quick and the Dead.”

When I was a securities lawyer, I once had three deals on the same filing schedule, including the E*TRADE IPO.  There were six consecutive weeks in which I billed 100 hours, and I went into the office every single day of the year until Fourth of July.  Shaking my fist at the sky, I swore, with God as my witness, I would never work hours like that again.

This week will probably be my ninth or tenth 100-hour week since chucking the corporate world for the ease, fame and glamour of being a professional writer, and I’m grateful for it.  Deeply grateful.

And if you see another blog post between now and the 20^th (besides the Happy Quotes on the weekend), then you’ll know I’m procrastinating.  Or maybe, just maybe, I got way ahead of schedule and am on the road to Having It All.

Like I said, Fingers Crossed!