Kate Flora: This is a Leap Year, that rare extra day that only comes around every four years, so today we’re commenting on what we might do with an extra day. Lounge around? Read one of those books that pile up when we’re writing? Knock off a few thousand extra words? Go out to eat to celebrate that gift of time? Or will it not feel different at all?

I’m going to be in Savannah, Georgia, on the third day of a drive to Florida, where we will spend the month of March. I know, it sounds indulgent, but actually it only means that I will be moving my laptop, my files and notes, and myself to a different location where I will settle in to work. It will feel different to write in shorts and tee shirt in March, instead of being bundled up as I’ve been for the past three months. Will it be liberating to leave my fleece-lined leggings behind? I’ll report from the field.

original version of novel being revised (cover has no resemblance to plot)

Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson: My extra day is going to be spent playing catch-up. As things turned out, on Monday we had to drive to Augusta (an hour each way) for an appointment, so forget accomplishing much else that day. Then Tuesday was the annual meeting with our accountant to sort out income tax for another year. That’s both less and more complicated now that I’m calling myself “retired” and my better half has taken up writing (and selling) fiction while still making almost a dozen custom (read expensive!) jigsaw puzzle tables during the last year. Throw in the weekly trip to the grocery store after the tax session, doing the week’s laundry, which would normally have been done on Monday, and there’s another day shot.

I’m not going to claim that, if I hadn’t had those appointments, today would be for goofing off. Being “retired” means I can goof off anytime I want. But I’ve been trying to revise one of the historical romance novels I wrote back in the 1990s, and momentum helps. With nine of seventeen chapters to go, averaging revisions on one chapter a day (about two hours in the morning to revise by hand and another two in the afternoon or early evening to enter changes into the doc file and revise a bit more while I’m at it), I wasn’t going to finish in February anyway, but the last thing I want to do is skip another day just now. So there you have it: I’ll be working on my extra day.

Maggie Robinson: I am reminded of my elementary school report cards. One of the categories was “Makes good use of time.” (No, one was not “Runs with scissors.”) I always got a plus sign in that column, but if The Great Efficiency Expert in the Sky was grading me lately, I would have a minus sign for sure. There is definitely room for improvement. I will probably be wasting this extra day with the same skill and diligence as the previous ones. But it’s time to ditch the Valentine hearts and decorate my Easter tree, so the last day in February will find me getting ready for March. Somebunny has to do it.

Matt Cost: Oh, the glorious reality of an extra day to accomplish all I want in life! The possibilities are endless. Perhaps I will go to Boston, spend the night and go to a Celtic’s game on Friday. A winter festival could be in the offering or perchance I will go to a movie. I recently went to my first movie theater flick in many a year, American Fiction, and greatly enjoyed it. There must be a band playing somewhere, a drink to be had, a fine meal out to be eaten. The possibilities of what to do with an extra day are infinite. But who am I kidding? I will most likely just write. Write on.

John Clark: I’m sleeping in because it’s predicted to be cold as hell. I indulged in one of my guilty pleasures yesterday and visited Pennywise,(https://www.facebook.com/FirstCongregationalChurchPittsfield/) a thrift shop operated by the Congo Church in Pittsfield. They sell tons of books at dirt cheap prices (think coming home with 5 tote bags for $10.00) I’ll be sorting them to see which sell, which I can trade on Paperbackswap.com, and Beth has already picked out a number of picture books to share with Gemma and Reid. In sum, I’ll be having fun while being busy, then topping everything off by going to refresher training so I can work at the polls next Tuesday.