Guest Post - Lindsey Leavitt

GUEST POST

LINDSEY LEAVITT

WHEN I’M NOT WRITING

Everyone knows I love princess books more than just about anything.  The books in Lindsey Leavitt’s Princess for Hire series are some of my favorites.  I was wondering what Lindsey does in the little bit of spare time she has.  It’s not exactly relaxing by the pool with a cool lemonade.

Since I spent all of winter and most of spring working on the third and final Princess for Hire book, I needed to recover a bit once I turned in my first draft. Deadline recovery usually means lots of house cleaning, finally cooking healthy meals for my family, park days with my girls, and catching up with friends. But this time around, I had another task to get to--exercise. This is largely due to my writing system. 

When I work, I offer myself little rewards for milestones. Those rewards are often chocolate-coated. And, um... those milestone became less and less monumental. Like, yay! I wrote a paragraph! Ice cream! So as you can imagine, my insides were pretty chocolate-coated too. 

So much of my Not Writing time has alternated between running, biking, swimming, hiking, kicking, and always--sweating. But the hardest/most humiliating? Zumba. I've been assured again and again that Zumba is Fun! You'll dance off the pounds with a smile and sass! Problem is, I took dance when I was little. I was the girl in the back corner who my instructor kept hoping would acquire coordination, or at the very least, rhythm, but THAT never came to pass. So Zumba was an adolescent flash-back of back row geekery. I somehow signed up for the class with five high school cheerleaders in the front. And there was one guy, and he shimmied better than me. The mirrors, oh the cruel, cruel mirrors, affirming that yes, I am a suburban mom of three who couldn't even get jiggy with it when it was still cool to say getting jiggy with it. All while the instructor smiled and sashayed and... how did she make her hips do that Shakira thing?

So short answer? This summer, I plan on revising the third princess book. But when I'm Not Writing? I will NOT be doing Zumba.

Thank you to Lindsey for this fun guest post and The Teen {Book} Scene for organizing this tour.