Read Across America Victim Of White-out

In Connecticut and a lot of other east coast states, school was cancelled today. That means Read Across America Day was cancelled, too. I've been rescheduled to read at my host school next Monday, though I'm not sure how big an event they're planning now.

This cancellation wasn't a crisis for me. In fact, I actually revised an entire chapter today, something I'm not always able to pull off. Great day.

However, cancelled events (which absolutely cannot be helped--life happens) can end up being a frustrating and even costly situation for some writers. If you're presenting to a new age group, for instance, it can mean days of creating content and a new PowerPoint presentation, as well as some run through practice. A presentation that big usually also involves payment. But if everything has to be cancelled, the writer loses days of work--both the days she spent prepping and the days she lost from writing because she was preparing for a presentation. If you're an author who actually makes a decent (or even adequate) income from your writing, a cancellation can be a bit of a financial blow. You can hope that you'll use the presentation some day, but you may not.

Fortunately, a Read Across America invitation only involves reading something you've already written. The biggest preparation I did for today was finding something in my closet to wear. And now I'll get to wear it next week. If only Read Across America came every week.