Ms.D and I have already met on several occasions but it was time to get started and record our conversations. Earlier this week I decided I was going to start taking the bus to our interviews. I grabbed the wrong bus to get downtown and arrived feeling rather frazzled and out of breath.

We sat down, ordered our lunch, started talking, and within about five minutes I realized that I wasn't actually recording. This is a bad dream come true.

(As I get older I am becoming increasingly OCD about a few things: forgetting my wallet, losing my keys and phone, and the audio recorder conking out during an interview. Just thinking about it makes me break out in a cold sweat!)

So I had looked down to see whether it was working (as per usual) and instead of seeing that reassuring "REC" symbol, the display read "DATA FILE SAVING." Uh, that's not right. And that's when it shut down completely.

Although I had fully charged my battery and tested it beforehand, it was clear that it was not holding the charge. Thank god I had a power cord. Thank god we were able to move to a table near an outlet! I apologized and we moved on, but I was (and am!) totally mortified.

I am glad I got my bad luck out of the way because the rest of the interview went well. I am going to start transcribing it today.

It's not clear in my mind yet how I'm going to structure all of the stories and information that she's giving me. Perhaps it's too early to start thinking about the timeline of her story. I have a feeling it will start to reveal itself once I really get started.

I am in awe of Ms.D and her drive to succeed. I need to figure out where this comes from. Is it nature or nuture? Are some people born to be big achievers, or does something happen to them when they’re young to make them into big achievers?
In the coming weeks I want to write about:

• what it is about Ms.D that makes her different
• is this a memoir or an autobiography or a motivational text
• self-publishing
• contracts
• the "shut up" principle (from the perspective of the interviewer!)

So this is the space that I've carved out for myself, separate from my other site.

As a person who is stuck on good design I hate that it's looking rather sparse, but I will have to wait until later to fix that.

First I need to give myself some guidelines.

1. This is my writing space.
2. This space is to help me sort out my ideas.

Ok. I know. That wasn't much of a list. But suddenly I'm looking at a blank page and I don't quite know where to begin.

*Deep breath.*

I've been talking to myself a lot about this writing project lately, so I suppose this site is a natural extension of those conversations.

This blog is specifically for a particular writing project. I've been asked to ghost write a book for a local executive. For now I'm going to refer to her as Ms.Direction, hence the name of this blog.

This name has really stuck in my head and I can't shake it. It fits.

Ms.Direction is an Ottawa-area executive who has challenged herself in ways that us regular people avoid. I will get into that more later (I know this is rather cryptic), but I will say that she is a very passionate and extremely motivated person.

When I first met her I was left breathless. And inspired. And I felt like I was floating. That's the effect she has on people. The things she has achieved in her life are amazing and I think I can learn a lot from this person.

She has a sense of direction in her life that many women are lacking. The book we're working on is ultimately to help inspire others to find their own direction and face their own challenges.

It will be our first "real" interview on Friday. I'll be recording everything, then transcribing it all.

A few years ago I would have been nervous about it, even afraid. (I hate admitting that, but there it is.) Today I am going into this with a clear sense that "I can do this." It feels pretty good.

I'm tweaking the template and making it my own. This is the place I'll be hanging out for the next while...