I spent yesterday morning researching children’s book publishers and doing the I-dream-of-being-a-children’s-book-writer stint for about a half hour. I finally found three publishers that I liked the look of and would be interested in writing for, so I sent off letters of introduction asking about some of the books they publish in series non-fiction and whether they’d like to assign any to me. You’re not supposed to do this, from everything I know and have read. You’re supposed to write up a proposal (if not the whole book), get an agent, be very dedicated to a certain idea and topic, know the audience and word count, and under no circumstance are you to write up letters staying, “Hey, have anything I can write for you?”

But life’s too short to live by the rules, so I did exactly that. I’ll give it two weeks before I move on to other publishers and maybe even agents.

On the agenda for today is going through the 800 or so e-mails that I’ve let accumulate in my Inbox over the last week, an article that’s due three days from now that I’d rather finish by tomorrow, and four pitches that have been languishing in my Drafts folder for weeks that I need to dust off and send.

And if I manage to get all that done? I think I’ll call it a day.