As you might have imagined, life has Gotten Busy, and it's going to stay busy until the end of the month. But today I was hanging out with the older niece, who is one of the beta readers for my YA book, and she brought up that she's started the book and is really enjoying it (although a couple of things confuse her--some I think will become clear as she reads on, but some I've taken note need to be clarified). She's very into drawing and is pretty good at it, so she started drawing things from the book. Seeing that, I mentioned to her that if she were to, say, produce maybe five or six illustrations of different scenes at various points in the book, they could very well wind up in the finished product.
She was really excited by the idea initially...but she's already developed some performance anxiety. Like, she runs track, but she won't go to track meets because it's too much pressure. (She's about the age I was when I quit performing on stage because I realized there were people out there in the audience, so I can relate). You could see an hour later that the Wow! stage was waning and the Oh crap! stage had begun. That actually makes me want her to do it more--I'd like to help her power past the intimidation stage of things just to show her that it can be done--but I may have to provide some additional motivation (most likely $$$) to make it happen.