“You don’t find time to write. You make time. It’s my job.”
- Nora Roberts

It’s so true. Off to make time…

Mondays are tough for me. Even though I don’t work outside the home, I still have that, OMG, it’s Sunday night dread I used to have when I taught or when I was still in school. The whole, I screwed around all weekend and got nothing done and I have a test / have to make up a test to give / have to find clothes to wear, panic still sets in, even though Monday mornings for me aren’t much different than any other morning.

Except that I work weekends. Pretty much all weekend, since my husband’s home to watch the kid and the dog and I can really stay up late and get things done. So Mondays are almost a recovery day for me. Except, of course, when I’m under deadline, they can’t be.

So, while my body insists on looking for it’s version of the weekend, I’ve got to push on through the Monday morning blues.

The most pernicious part of procrastination is that it can become a habit. We don’t just put off our lives today; we put them off until our deathbed.

Never forget: This very moment, we can change our lives. There was never a moment, and never will be, when we are without the power to alter our destiny. This second, we can turn the tables on Resistance.

This second, we can sit down and do our work.

The War of Art by Steven Pressfield

It’s time to go sit down and do my work. Join me!

I’m still stuffed from yesterday’s Thanksgiving meal - last night, I was so full it hurt to breathe. Not a pretty thing - I came home and wanted to write, but could only loll around, exhausted. So I dragged out a book - an old favorite - and I simply read.

Today’s a different story - much work to be done. But the point is, reading is essential to writing. It’s easy to forget that, to keep books as rewards for when you finish a certain amount of pages written…but sometimes reading is the only way to keep writing.

This all makes sense in my mind, of course - hopefully, the sentiment’s coming across.

“Read, read, read. Read everything—trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the most. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it is good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out the window.”
-William Faulkner

Sorry about that, everyone - I forgot what day of the week it was Today’s the mid-week check-in, so post your word counts and your progress below!

And then scroll down and talk with me about your love of office supplies…

This is one of my favorite topics, because there’s nothing that can energize my writing more than the right supplies. Or a trip to Staples.

I like to write longhand – there’s something about the feel of pen to paper that’s very soothing to me. But I don’t write a book exclusively like that – I’m probably closer to half longhand, half computer with no rhyme or reason as to why I choose one over the other any given day…or hour. It’s all about what I’m in the mood for. But when I use the computer, it’s always my laptop which is always on my lap – I get really sore wrists when I try to sit at the desk with my desktop.

I always used to write longhand on letter sized pads – I started with white or yellow but in recent years switched to light blue because I think the color’s a bit more soothing on the eyes. Nothing fancy – the Staples brand was perfect. And then I discovered the lure of the Claire Fontaine notebook and I’ve become a complete and unabashed addict. The paper is so smooth and it makes your writing fast. I don’t like fast pens but I like fast paper.

I realize that many people wouldn’t understand that last statement, but I think this group here will.

For pens, my favorite it the Pilot Precise Grip Extra Fine in black. I also like the plain old Papermate stick pen (also black…I’m not a blue pen kind of girl.) I never write in pencil either. I’m a lefty and I’ve got to be careful of the smudge factor.

I think most of us are probably, can write anywhere, anytime with anything if we had to, types. But if all is perfect in your writing world, what writer tools do you enjoy? Pen or paper? Special ones or anything that you can find? Laptop, desktop or Alphasmart? Sticky notes? Index cards? Special place?

by writing.

“Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.”
– Erica Jong

“Writing, I think, is not apart from living. Writing is a kind of double living The writer experiences everything twice. Once in reality and once in that mirror which waits always before or behind.”

The other night I went to an art show - it was my friend/neighbor’s senior college project, and they set it up as if you’re walking into a real live gallery opening. Anyway, I was just blown away by the quality of her work - even bought a piece.

But the part I wanted to talk about was the subject matter of her show. See, a while back, she told me she’d picked her theme, and that it was sexual in nature. What was cool about it was that each piece was almost like an optical illusion - for most of them, you really had to look to make out the two bodies on the canvas (placed in sexual positions but not graphic graphic, if I’m making sense)…but they were graphic enough that I knew some people in say her uh, immediate family, might be uncomfortable.

She asked me if she thought people who knew her would be shocked. I told her that her parents, no matter how proud they were of her, were going to be more than a little freaked and that there was really nothing she could do about that. I also told her that some people were going to automotically assume, no matter what, that these positions, etc. were inspired by her real life, and that she and her long time boyfriend were going to get the looks and questions and nudges. And yeah, they did, and she handled it beautifully, even when people kept coming up to her, their faces red and nudging her. Like, I’m wondering what they expected her to say - oh yes, my boyfriend and I have gotten into all these positions… She just told them that, as an art student, she was very used to working with nudes and the human body. Not a blush or a giggle from her - I was so proud.

I find that this happens - with me, anyway - more so with family members beyond my parents (and, of course, the men my husband works with) than anyone - I don’t know - maybe it’s the lack of distance relatives have toward us that make them uncomfortable…but I know that I hear the comments more from relatives and close friends (not all, of course, but a lot) about my books. In fact, the women my husband works with are convinced that because my husband was born in Africa and so was one of my characters, that they’re one in the same.

Trying to convince them that they’re not is a lesson in futility, so I’ve stopped. I don’t know why certain people assume that the writers/artists they know wouldn’t have the imagination to tell their stories/paint their paintings without using their own lives as a step-by-step manual. Non-writers in my family ask me that all the time - how do you write an entire book - where do your ideas for the scenes come from? - and the answer, the ideas are just there, doesn’t satisfy them at all. Then again, I wonder if, when they read other fiction by people they don’t know, if they assume the same exact thing…must remember to ask that.

Do you guys run across this at all - not so much the snide comments, but the relatives who are really almost embarrassed because they feel you’ve put your life on display? Is it genre dependant? (ie, because I’ve got the romance and the erotic romance thing going, I definitely get a lot of the looks.)

For all of us here in the U.S., I hope your Thanksgiving is wonderful - and to my friends outside the U.S., well, maybe you guys could pick up the writing slack for us today? We promise, we’ll return the favor.

But seriously, do you write on the holidays? Since I don’t cook, even if we’re having whatever holiday it may be at my house (YAY for husbands who cook!) I find that I actually have more sitting around, doing nothing downtime. Which typically, I waste on puttering around, waiting for people to arrive, so yes, I could be more productive on the holiday mornings or afternoons.

Although, I guess puttering is a good time for plotting!

The best time for planning a book is while you’re doing the dishes. ~Agatha Christie

I was watching an old episode of Everybody Loves Raymond tonight – it’s the one where Ray tells his wife Deborah that he’s working late because he’s got to finish writing his column. So Deb goes to his job and brings him dinner – only to find him hanging out, playing paper football and watching TV. She says something like, I thought you had a column to write. And he says something like, writing isn’t all done on paper – I am writing, up here (while pointing to his head)

And yeah, I so understood that. That time I spend staring blankly at the TV / out the window / talking on the phone / baking that cake during the time I’m supposed to be working helps. That doesn’t mean that at any given moment I won’t be ready to turn back around and get back to the computer. Sometimes it happens when I’m in the middle of a conversation or in the middle of the cake baking and I have to wander away and get back to it.

I fully believe that you need to spend time writing inside your head before it’s ready to bring to the paper. However, sometimes I do wonder if I’m really just procrastinating out of fear – case in point – I have a book due soon – like, really soon – but I haven’t been able to get much done on it because I’m not sure of a few things. Sure, I’ve been writing scenes, but nothing was meshing the way I wanted it too. So I stopped working on it for a bit (even though it’s due, like, soon – have I mentioned that?) and I tried not to panic. Reminded myself that I’ve been here before.

And today, I was in the car and I was blasting music and suddenly, one of the answers was looking for was there. So simple. Not the entire plot, but enough to give me a reason to base the middle of the book on. Enough to make me realize that I did the right thing by stopping the writing on that book and letting myself just think it through.

Do you give yourself permission to just sit back and think? Do you find that that helps you, or do you think that continuing to write through the problem helps you more?