1 | Cathy C. Hall Writes

Well, this is irony.

Today’s fun site is called Retronaut, and by the way, I’m in love with this website. Its tag line is, “The past is a foreign country. This is your passport.” And you don’t even have to pack anything to take with you. Except maybe your curiosity.

It’s brimming with photographs from back in the day, and the history that goes along with the photos. You’ll find the fascinating and the quirky, the witty and the tragic. Honestly, I hope you don’t get stuck there for the entire weekend, but you’ll have a ton of fun if you do.

Oh, and the irony I mentioned? I couldn’t get certain features (like my links) to work on WordPress, so I did a little investigating and found that my browser would no longer support them. So then I had to upload a spanking new browser (I went to Browse Happy to pick a new one) and it’s all just super, right? Except all my Favorites (where I store neat little websites to read and/or blog about later) are on the old browser’s Favorites. Which means every time that I want to check out something in the present, I have to go back to the past. At least until the past catches up with my present. Er…or something like that.

The point is, you’re probably going to need to update your browser soon (if you haven’t already). Because (and here’s the ironic punch line) times marches on, friends, and you’ve got to keep up or you’re history.

I must tell you, and I hope you won’t be too jealous, but the weather in Georgia right now is absolutely GORGEOUS. Bright and sunny, a little nip in the morning, warming in the afternoon, humidity nearly non-existent. Honestly, if you were singing, “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning,” you’d be singing about my little corner of the world.

Though I work on the inside, I love the outside. And I wanted to sort of bring the gorgeous outside into my writing space. So I made a slight modification to my office (which you can read about in “My Writing Room With a View” over at The Muffin.)

Seriously, it’s an inspiring view! Except that I feel like I should be writing about puppies or rainbows or pumpkin festivals. You know, subjects that require a certain amount of bliss. Instead, I am barreling into the scaryscreepy, not to mention intense, climax of my YA novel. What I need is abject terror! Chlling fear! Run-for-your-life tension!

Yesterday, I went back upstairs around 10:00 at night to work on some edits/rewrites of the chilling chapter. Looking out into the inkyblack night really put me in the mood. So now I’m thinking that maybe for this gorgeous day, I should work a little on my happy, little picture book and save the creepy for tonight when the wind blows eerily through the trees.

What about you? Is your writing affected by your surroundings? Maybe I need to put up some curtains until I finish the work-in-progress?

Or maybe I just need to quit making excuses–and write.