I am soooo tired! I got back from RT just a smidge under a week ago and I’m only just now beginning to catch up with my life again. Part of me is inspired, after all, how can anyone not be after spending a week around so many other creative people? I usually get ideas for stories when I visit other places and this time is no different although for me, it’s all about the Pennsylvania Turnpike (and dude, I’m telling you, I’m totally scarred by any stretch of road where you CAN’T GET OFF!)

Anyway, I have a book due on May 15 and I’d hoped to finish before I left for RT. But my parents were here. I wanted to write, I did, but I spent more time packing and getting ready for RT and making sure everyone was set for me to be gone eight days than writing. And then I didn’t get a darned thing written while in Pittsburgh so now I’m about ten days behind schedule.

It’s not always 3K a day for me without any effort. This book has been hard to write. I’ve been pulled in several directions and I’ve wanted to focus on three other things and I’ve had to set it down to revise and edit other things but when I picked it up when I got home, I realized it’s way better than I’d thought. So I’m still working like the little engine that could because it’s not a maybe line, it’s a deadline and I do love this world a lot.

Some days it’s shiny to write, some days it’s just a job. But it’s all good - because in the end, when I finish, I feel like I could move mountains - even if it’s just for a few hours until I need to work on something else, LOL.

Keep working! Every word you get down is one that wasn’t there before.

“If there’s a book you really want to read but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” — Toni Morrison

This was why I started writing, and why I would have continued to write, even if I hadn’t sold a single manuscript.

This is why I write. Getting paid is just a bonus.

Blocked? Remember the story you want to read, the one no one has written…and write it.

Yikes! Forgot to blog! RT totally fried my brain and when I realized I had today–as in I should have posted this uh…16 hours ago? I figured a nice, quick quote would work.

Found this one

To write something, you have to risk making a fool of yourself.

by Anne Rice, found here.

And how very apt. Because right now, I’m writing something I’m not sure makes sense to anybody but me, something I’m not sure anybody will like, characters I think some people might hate…or at least dislike. And I’m wondering–why

Anne Rice has the answer. Writing sometimes meet taking chances that cool make you look…well, weird.

Take the chance!

It’s the middle of the week. Lots of stuff to do. But are you writing…? Tell Sven about those projects.

“You can sit there, tense and worried, freezing the creative energies, or you can start writing something, perhaps something silly. It simply doesn’t matter what… In five or ten minutes the imagination will heat, the tightness will fade, and a certain spirit and rhythm will take over.”

I just returned from the Romantic Times Convention. For me, the best part of a conference is in talking with people - readers, authors and aspiring writers - about books and the business of writing. I actually spoke in two workshops at this conference. Both were directed (mostly) at unpublished writers. We talked about craft issues and general ideas about time management, writing and process. Very interesting stuff. Some folks clearly were working hard at getting published. Others wanted to sell but were hitting roadblocks - some of their own making. Something about all those conversations made me think of this quote by T.E. Lawrence:

All people dream; but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recess of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity. But the dreamers of the day are the dangerous people, for they may act their dream with open eyes to make it possible.

Acting on the dream. Seems to me that may be a big part of the difference between those who reach their writing goals and those who don’t.

Less than a month to go now. How is that story going?

What do you do when you don’t want to write? When you’re having an “I don’t feel like it” day. We all have them. When you’re whiny, not in the mood, you want to watch television, or go shopping, or go outside, or you’d rather do anything else other than write.

It’s not like taking a day off work, when you can find someone to fill in for you, someone to pick up the slack until you get back to things.

If you don’t write your book, who else is going to do it? This is writing, it’s a solitary endeavor. If you don’t do the work, it doesn’t get done.

We don’t get to take a day off and assign our writing tasks to someone else. If we don’t write, the writing doesn’t get done. If we’re not in the mood and decide we’re just not going to write today, then we get behind.

Who’s going to finish your book if not you? The answer is no one. Only you can do it.

Get to work

Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire.
Reggie Leach

I’m at the Romantic Times Convention right now but I wrote this last week. *Waving* Hi everyone, I hope your writing is setting your soul on fire this week. I hope to come back with wonderful ideas and not a cold like I did last year.

Success comes to a writer, as a rule, so gradually that it is always something of a shock to him to look back and realize the heights to which he has climbed.
P. G. Wodehouse

Last RT I had a moment. As I sat, packed into the plane, flying home, an intense swell of emotion came over me. I realized I’d made it farther than I’d ever imagined I would. I was an author. People came to have me sign their books. I had dinner with my editors and my agent. I talked writing with people I’ve admired for many years. It was real after so much hard work and it caught me by surprise that it would be so sweet.

I came home and worked more and I continue to work to this day. Because I never want to lose that sense of wonder at being set aflame with this dream.

Keep working and I’ll see you all next week!

You do not like them.
So you say.
Try them! Try them!
And you may.
Try them and you may, I say.

- Green Eggs and Ham, by Dr. Seuss

My husband and I are house-hunting. (bear with me, folks, I swear it relates to writing!)

Our realtor is showing us massive lists of houses in our town that fit our search criteria. We’ve been scrolling through the lists, kicking out the ones in neighborhoods we don’t like, dismissing the ones with too few pictures or not enough curb appeal.

Yesterday we went to look at houses, and on the way home, we passed another house with a For Sale sign in the yard. Why wasn’t THIS house on our list? It was perfect! Perfect neighborhood, perfect price range. We went home and looked it up online — the inside was perfect too!

And guess what? It was under contract.

Well, we went back to the list and discovered that we’d zoomed right past it because the website picture didn’t do the house justice at ALL. So I spent several hours last night going through the list again and investigating every house in depth, even the ones that we’d ignored earlier. And I found some more possibilities.

Often in writing, when we hit a scene and we’re stuck, we dismiss ideas of where to go because it’s too outlandish or too extreme or too ugly or too [insert adjective here]. But maybe we should try it. It doesn’t hurt us to look at a house. It doesn’t hurt you to write a few hundred words and see if there’s any potential. If it doesn’t work out, you’ve wasted a twenty minutes, and you can delete it with a click of a button.

But maybe you should try it, because otherwise, you never know what you might miss.