A new book that I just have to order: Single Mom Seeking: Playdates, Blind Dates, and Other Dispatches from the Dating World by Rachel Sarah. Rachel has written a fantastic column for Literary Mama for three years running -- on which she bases her book. You can read her column here. And it is well worth the visit. This is one girl who did her homework.

You may have noticed my recent reading interests have turned to single moms who date (check most recent blog posts). Being a single mom who has been flirting around the edges of a dating life for 3 years now, I find that I am still clinging to my most successful procrastation technique.

Research.

After 3 years of researching my dissertation topic (a 19th century woman writer), I got to the point where I had read everything she had written, bought every edition of every book she had published, read every letter she sent, tracked down all her living descendents, visited her grave and all the places she had lived, and even sat in her church. And still I wasn't writing.

When I decided I needed to fly to NY from SC to read all the newspapers in which her work had appeared (in their original paper format--no microfilm for me), a graduate school friend finally said to me --"Enough. Go write. Stop researching. Or I am going to graduate without you." So, I started writing, and I found it wasn't so bad.

I researched the durn thing for 3 years. It took me 6 months to write it.

Hmm. What does that say about my dating potential? I've been single now for 3 years. Maybe enough research?

Aww, nahhh. I still haven't read Single Mom Seeking: Playdates, Blind Dates, and Other Dispatches from the Dating World. Maybe then....