Ah, the magic of snow!

It was the end of a snow day, fifteen minutes before bed time. And the snow was still falling. The question had been asked countless times that afternoon: "Will there be another snow day?"

The phone rang. I picked it up and listened with a smile at the recorded message announcing that school would be closed on Friday due to "bad" weather. Now the question was whether I should let my eager son know the good news right then, or let him sweat it until I tucked him in.

Just then the sounds of delighted screeching and rapidly pounding footsteps echoed up the stairway. "Dad's phone rang! Dad's phone rang!" my little guy cried. "No school tomorrow!" On his face shone the joy of ten Christmas mornings.

Few things rival the magic of a snow day.

Don't toss it. Fix it!

I like fixing things. When my son told me his retractable race track toy wouldn't work, I took it apart, figured out the problem, and got it working again. When I found a book with a broken binding at a used book store, I bought it for a steal and put it back together. And when a visiting child put his foot through our "inexpensive" family room ottoman, I made it as good as new.

I'm not an expert at fixing things, but I enjoy the challenge of trying to bring a little more life to something that other people might just toss out.

This trait translates well for my writing. When a manuscript doesn't seem to be working, often all it takes is a little extra effort (okay, often more than a little) to get it into shape. So when Corey told me a few weeks ago that an editor was interested in one of our manuscripts, but it would need a lot of work, I was all for it!

As with the broken toy and sunken-in ottoman, the story had to be taken apart and put together again. After weeks of cutting, tinkering, tweaking, and an especially difficult-to-assemble ending stanza, we had ourselves a story that worked!

Determination--and editor interest!--were all we needed to get our story into proper working order.

So now we wait. And if we need to work on it a bit more, I say bring it on!

What have you fixed lately?