Another day of fighting with some monster muscle tightness. The human body is just not made to sit at a computer this long without reprecussions. I’ve had massage, thanks to Carri for having the hand strength, but even she had to give up after awhile. I think at this point I’d need a power lifter or something of the like to get the knots out, if I could take the pain.

I am allowing myself real coke and small pieces of good chocolate to try and open up all those tight bits of myself. Tylenol is my friend. I can’t have most pain relievers due to other issues. I went out to the Hallmark card store for an hour and bought silly cards, pretty cards, and candles. I love cards. I love getting them and giving them. I love finding the perfect card for an occasion or a friend, and if its perfect for both, bonus points. I also found an album called, "The Best of Funk". I’ve got it on now.

I just can’t listen to "Brick House" by the Commodores and not smile. It will always be Miss Piggy’s song to me. "Play that Funky Music" by Wild Cherry is another smile. "Pick up the Pieces" by the Average White Band is a laugh because of the movie Under Cover Brother, which is so wrong its just right. I’m thinking I could use a good laugh and may try and find time to watch it tonight. More songs on the album, "Give up the Funk (Tear the Roof Off the Sucker) by Parliament , "Super Freak" by Rick James, "You Dropped a Bomb on Me" by The Gap Band. That’s just a few of the songs. They’ve all got a beat, and they all make me start dancing in my chair, or even having to get up and dance around the office. That’s about the mood I need for today, something fun that you can dance to.

 

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Archon 33 is past. One of the weird things about it was that it was number thirty-three. The first Archon I went to I’d sold one short story. Now I have twenty-seven novels published and one short story collection, STRANGE CANDY. I’m still a little surprised that I had enough short stories to make a whole book of just my stuff.  DIVINE MISDEMEANORS, the eighth book in the Meredith Gentry series, will bring novels up to twenty-eight. Which means that FLIRT will be number twenty-nine. That makes the next big Anita book number thirty.

We missed the chance to celebrate ten years of the Anita series in 2003, but now we have the chance to celebrate me publishing my thirtieth novel. What should we do to commemorate it?

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I will see some of you later today at Archon. It was one of the first cons I ever went to as a very new writer. In fact I didn’t know science fiction conventions existed to my early twenties. I went to the very first NameThatCon and attended a writer’s workshop taught by Emma Bull, Will Shetterly, and Stephen Gould. It was the most useful class or program on writing that I ever attended. Did it make me a better writer? No. But it did make me a better editor of my own work, and that is a very valuable skill for a writer. It also introduced me to the beginnings of my writing group, The Alternate Historians. The only originally members left are Deborah Millitello and me. All the rest have gone onto other things, or just simply didn’t stay the course. Janni Simner left us to move out of state and has many books out there. We forgave her for moving away, and she kept up with her writing and has flourished. So it all worked out.

That convention was in the spring, by that early summer because that was when Archon used to be held I had sold my first short story. It would be the story I edited just after the workshop, like I said it didn’t make me a better writer, but it taught me how to judge my work in a clear headed manner. Which is absolutely necessary to a selling writer. And no, I can’t explain how to do this to you for your own writing. It’s not that I won’t, but can’t. It was an a-ha moment for me. A moment when the stars aligned and I could simply see the writing. It fell apart before my eyes and I understood how to construct sentences and words to make things come alive on paper. I’ve had this experience in only three other areas. When I was playing chess I could sometimes have the board fall away and I could simply "see" the game, the moves, and how to get there. When I was doing Judo, there would be that moment on the matt when I could "see" how to throw my opponent. I just knew where my body needed to be and did it. I am now having movies and television shows fall away and show their bones to me so I can see how that camera angle, that gesture, that bit of blocking, or dialogue made that scene work. That’s the newest skill, and it will be interesting to see if it grows like the ability to "see" writing on the page.

I can’t tell you how to "see" like that in anything. It happens, not to everybody, not always, but in those moments its like the world slows, then stops, and I can almost see the chess board divide into squares as if they’ve gained a new dimension or two, and the moment in a fight when your mind fast forwards the fight so you know how to win, you see it in your mind before your body acts,  you seem to have extra time to react and you use it. Words almost slither down the page, falling in black marks over white, and I can "see" how the other writer has constructed that bit I like, and it teaches me how to construct my own version of it. It’s a way of learning the tools of your trade, whatever that trade may be. Some people have engines fall apart and reconstruct for them. Others its math, or music, or acting, but not the rest of a scene. 

I hope for all of you reading this that if you need your a-ha moment that it comes to you. You need so many things to be a good writer. You need inspiration, a muse, persistence, a dogged-determination, your own special voice, joy in words, a love of reading, and to be really good you need that last extra insight. You need to be able to "see" other people’s writing and figure out how they do the trick. How did they make you cry here? How did that image burn itself into your brain. Pick it apart, find out how it works, dismantle the clock of their industry and make the tools you learn from others your own so you can construct your own beautiful mechanism. Because our art is made up of inspiration, perspiration, but one last thing, the tools of our trade.

A writer’s tools are not pens and paper, or computers, or whatever new thing they come up with for us to write. A writer’s true and only tool are words. Everything else is just how we put the words on paper, but in the end its just the words. My words, your words out there on paper, trying to convey an entire world with nothing but little black marks on paper, or screen.  Our words out there on their own, because you can’t sit on the reader or editor’s shoulder and explain yourself. You won’t be there to say, "Well that’s not exactly what I meant?" Or, "I really meant to say this, and you’ve totally missed my point." If they’ve totally missed your point then your words have failed, because in the end words are like children you raise them the best you can and then you send them out into the world to explain themselves. Writing well means your words can take the reader across the street without you being there to hold their hands. Now I’m going back to work to make more words that will take more people across a particularly busy intersection of plot, but I have hope that the words will be there and the reader will know just when to cross against the light.

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There is a natural flow to every book. There’s even a natural flow to how most writers work. I know writers that take six months off between books. One writer finishes a book then goes back to college to get a new degree or course, and then goes back to writing. For most of us, we finish a book and take a few weeks off, maybe a month, or two, or we work on other projects while the next series book percolates in our heads.

Some writers like to write at night. Some do it because that’s the only time the house is quiet and they won’t be interrupted. Some writers write at dawn, though not usually by choice. I got up at 5 AM five days a week when I worked in corporate America so I could do my 2 pages which was what I did every day, just two pages, and then I’d get dressed and go to work. I am not a morning person, but I found that after a hard day in the cubicle farm I was too drained to write, so I wrote before work ate my creativity up. It was either that or not write at all which wasn’t going to get my first book written. Once my daughter started school my writing hours had to change to when she was at school, and then stop when she got home. Maybe another session after dinner and the kiddo was tucked in bed. Most writers don’t average more than four hours a day at their computer, often less. I am concerned that some of you out there are telling me you are comparing yourself to how I write. Fine, but bear in mind that every professional writer is unique and has spent years finding out how they and their muse work best. You need to find out how you and your muse work best.

I am actually writing beyond the natural rhythm of either myself, or this current book. Why? Because my deadline is breathing down my neck and I have made commitments to my publisher to make that deadline. Not to mention all the other people who will work on this book, and the bookstores that will sell it, and you guys who will read it. I miss the deadline and its like dominos it all falls down. Now there will be other dates and they would move it if they had to for me, but I prefer to make original deadlines. Partly it’s my nearly puritanical work ethic. Partly its if I miss this deadline then it puts me behind for the next book deadline. Again, the dominos analogy comes into play.

If I felt I had a choice I would not be pushing for the page count that I am. In fact, the day I did ten pages I remember thinking clearly, "Wow that’s a great days work, and its not enough." At this point if I could average twenty pages a day that would be about right, but I can’t. Even my muse and me and my work ethic can’t promise that.  In fact my work ethic has stopped cracking the whip and is feeling a little tired. So please, don’t compare your page count to mine, and don’t let my productivity make you feel like you’re slacking off, because if deadlines allowed I’d be doing less, too.

Comfortable pace is between 4 and 8 pages a day with the end of the book going anywhere from 8 to 20 pages. Yes, I can do the 20 page stretch but my problem comes because my publisher and agent begin to ask me to choose deadlines when I’m at the end of a book and I’ve hit that muse-driven stretch of unbelievable page count. I’m on a writer’s high for days and everything seems so fluid, so right. I’ve learned not to set deadlines when I’m in that mind set, because it only lasts a few weeks, or a few days, and then I’m back to a normal page count, but my new deadlines are set at that breathless pace that I won’t actually naturally hit until near the end of the book. I’m not the only writer that I’ve heard say this, that in that rush of creative flood you feel so buoyant, so certain, so optimistic, that you are certain you can turn that next book in no time. The trouble is the mood passes and your optimistic self has made a deadline that your pessimistic self has to deliver. So, please, don’t compare your page count or rhythm to mine right now, because even for me its artificial. I am writing ahead of my muse and my comfort level. I will pay for it later by the way, because as wonderful as the muse is she is not without cost.

I’ll leave you with a quote: "Never forget that the nurturing and preservation of your own muse is job one. Lose it and you may be losing a great deal." Robert Genn

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Favorite show that we Tivo-ed this week: Glee. This episode is called "Preggers" which is sort of self explanatory, and it does have a surprise pregnancy, but the parts of the show that made it my favorite for the week are about the other theme of the show. Curt/Kurt who is our very gay teenage boy main character gets a little too much help from one of his friends and ends up having to figure out how to really be the kicker for the football team so his dad can come to a game. It seems typical sitcom fodder, but it’s "Glee" and its never typically. I’ll try not to spoil it for you but my two favorite moments are the song/video at the beginning where the father comes in and sees his son in a unitard doing a Beyonce song, and the moment on the football field where it all comes to a hilarious and memorable end.

Spoiler Alert: If you watch Glee but haven’t seen this show, stop reading. No, really, I mean it.

Still reading? Okay, I warned you here’s the spoiler.

The preggers moment only works because our straight male student is so naive on what gets a girl pregnant that he believes he got his girlfriend pregnant from ejaculating in a hot tub. Hot tubs are hot enough that sperm would die in seconds, this doesn’t mean that sex in a hot tub won’t get you pregnant folks, because if you ejaculate inside the girl the temperature is juuuust right for making babies. Unprotected sex is a bad idea unless you want that baby moment.

But the guy believing hot tubs get you pregnant reminded me of a high school moment of my own. I was simply walking from one class to another, books in hand, when I turned the corner and came upon a knot of girls all huddled around one hysterical classmate. I might have walked on by, but one of the girls in the huddle was one of my best friends so I felt compelled to stop and find out what all the fuss was about. Turns out the hysterical girl had had that special talk with her mother the night before, but some of the facts might not have been accurate. What facts?

Seems the mother had told the hysterical girl that when a boy penetrated a girl that going in was okay, but when he withdrew his penis it would drag all of her intestines with it and gut her like a fish. (My hand to God, I am not making this up.) Apparently, the mother went to the alien school of sex education, and the daughter bought it.

My friend said, "We have a farm. It doesn’t work that way for any of our livestock."

Hysterical Girl, "My mom wouldn’t lie to me."

Hmm. None of the other girls could convince her that her mom had told such a horrible lie. Finally, it was my turn to try. I went for logic. Me, "You have a little brother, right?"

Hysterical Girl, hiccuping between sobs. "Yes."

"He’s younger than you, right?"

Hiccup. "Yes."

"Then obviously your mom did not die when your father had sex with her, because she’s got two children."

The other girls chimed in with their own siblings, most younger, some older, but in either case proof that sex did not kill you. Otherwise there’d be no younger siblings. I didn’t try and argue the whole human race would have died out if sex really worked like this, it seemed a little too esoteric for Hysterical Girl. But the younger sibling thing worked. That she had proof of because of her own younger brother. Cool.

She began to calm down and stop crying. Then she looked at me with big, doe eyes and said, "But why would my mom tell me something like that?"

No one else seemed to have a good answer, but I did. "Apparently she never wants you to have sex, ever," I said.

Calmer Hysterical Girl nods. The other girls nod, as if I’ve said a smart thing. It didn’t seem smart to me, it seemed obvious. I have to wonder what the mother was thinking, because if I hadn’t been there at that moment would her daughter have believed that pile of dog poo? Maybe, but never fear, I was there to add a dose of logic to the madness of our mothers trying to save our virginity, or in Hysterical Girls case keep herself from every becoming a grandmother. I wonder if she tried to tell her son that his penis would go in, but not come out?

This was either freshman or sophomore year of school back in the day when most of us were actually still virgins at this age and sex was theoretical. I went to the library to learn about sex. There was so much misinformation going around that I had girls who were having actual sex with actual boys come to me for advice, because I had unbiased information from the books. I can thank those girl and their horror stories of bad sex, misunderstood contraception, and boys that couldn’t wait to over share in the morning for me getting through high school as the best-educated virgin in my school. But I figured if they were coming to the bookish virgin to find out more about sex which they were already having, then I wasn’t missing much. I’ve never regretted the decision to wait, and this was the beginning of me learning how to research. When the girls were taking my advice after a disastrous Saturday night date, I wanted that advice to be right.

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What is a muse? What is your personal muse? Goddesses? Fairies? A part of your own brain that only seems to have a life of its own? Is the muse simply inspriation? I’ll let you decide for yourself on that part of it, but tonight I’ll write about things I do to coax my muse, or maybe to coax me. I’ve had the muse hot and bothered when I was so tired I could barely keep my eyes open, so my muse and I take turns coercing each other.

My muse runs on caffeine, or at least hot liquids. When I was first starting out it was coca-cola, cold and straight up. But for most of my published career its been hot tea, or hotter coffee. I found that caffeine free coffee and tea works but I prefer caffieneated. Hot liquid seems to be the winner for me and my muse to function. A good straight oolong, or monkey picked oolong, or English breakfast is usually the first choice. I’ll do jasmine in a green, or some of the roasted rice flavored greens, but straight green still tastes like I’m trying to eat fresh lawn clippings. Not my favorite. I honestly don’t drink coffee until the wether gets cold or I’m having trouble staying in the mindset for an Anita book. The very smell of coffee helps me get into her head and her world.

Yesterday I got like 5 pgs in the morning so the majority of the 16 pgs was done in the afternoon. Now, I don’t normally do two sessions on the same project, but the deadline has hit crunch time so its become an evil neceissty. How did I coax more pages out of my muse and me? On days when I don’t feel like writing, at all, I get out the fine bone china tea sets complete with cups and saucers. I will admit that my favorite tea set is based on the Brambly Hedge children’s books. Yes, dressed up mice. The tea pot is beautiful and the cups and matching saucers each do a different season. Favorite seasons autumn and winter. I got out the autumn tea cup and saucer yesterday and it helped me feel better. It simply makes me smile and has for over fifteen years which is how long I’ve had the tea set. I bought it when I could barely afford it, and I’ve never regretted the purchase.

Are you weirded out that my favorite tea set has mice in Victorian clothes painted on it? More so that I can write Merry and Anita while drinking out of fine bone china? I don’t question what helps me work, I just make a note and repeat. It’s all about figuring out what helps you create.

My muse really does run on music. I have never written to silence since I got out of my grandmother’s house and was allowed music and privacy. My first book was written to Motzart. The soundtrack to "Amedueus" to be exact. I think I discovered Depeche Mode next, then U2, and INXS. I wrote my first several Anita books to those three bands. When I first started writing Anita the books averaged 450 to 550 page count and I would play that one album over and over until by the end of the book I wouldn’t be able to stand to hear that music again. It used to take me months, or years, to listen to music I wrote a book to and then the books got longer. Much over 550 and one album begins to grow stale before I’m done, so I’d have to change in the middle of the book, or near the end. The album I finished to was often the same album I would start the next book to, if it was in the same series that is, I try to change music between series. It just helps my muse know we’ve shifted gears.

The iPod has been a wonderful invention for me because I can put hundreds of songs on it and play them in a cycle so that I don’t grow tired of any one band, or singer. So I get to keep my favorite music just to enjoy between books. Favorite bands right now are Drowning Pool, Disturbed, The Fray, Flaw, Drain STH (though its attached to a particular book and I still can’t really enjoy them yet. it’s too soon). I went through a girl singer period at the beginning of writing Merry and for Anita, too. They both write pretty well to Tori Amos, but Merry is more Sarah McLaughlin and Sheryl Crow. Merry seems to really like She Wants Revenge. Though some songs remind me more of Anita, apparently my muse thinks they remind her of Merry. I try not to argue with my Muse, because I will lose.

On days when the writing is going badly I shift to musicals. I will pick a musical for a book, but I usually don’t have to listen to it often enough to grow sick of the musicals, and if I do it means its been a damned hard book to write. Last Anita book I think it was "1776". Last Merry book I believe was "Mary Poppins" but I’m not a hundred percent certain of that. I know that the musical for this Merry book, DIVINE MISDEMEANORS seems to be "Thoroughly Modern Millie" the Broadway cast.  I’ve written to "Hairspray" "Jekyll" "The Secret Garden" "Sunday in the Park with George" "Into the Woods" "Gigi" "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers" "Once Upon a Mattress" Rogers and Hammerstien’s "Cinderella" "The Music Man" and more. But you get the idea. I don’t know why musicals will get me past a block in my creative process, but I know that it works for me, and again if it works I don’t question it.

On days when the writing is going really, really badly I do Christmas music. Yes, you read that right. I’ve written to a Dean Martin Christmas Album, Bing Crosby, the entire Rat Pack, Sinatra on his own, but I tend to like Dean Martin best of those. Yes, I know that Bing Crosby is not part of the Rat Pack. I really like the first two Excelsis albums because what goes better together than Goth and the holidays. Mmm-mmm-good. Not as fond of the third Excelsis album though. I love "A Very Scary Solstice" and "An Even Scarier Solstice" from the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society. Traditional carols done with Lovecraft’s world in mind. What’s not to love with songs like, "Have Yourself a Scary Little Solstice" "It’s the Most Horrible Time of the Year" "I Saw Mommy Kissing Yog-Sothoth" or "Little Rare Book Room" "All I Want for Solstice Is My Sanity" "Harley Got Devoured by the Undead". Ahh, the holidays.

I’ll also go on a kick for a particular carol and then Jon gets to score the internet for different versions of it and make me a CD. I’ve done that with "Carol of the Bells" and "Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow."

Weirdest holiday music I’ve ever written a Merry book to has got to be "The Veggie Tales Christmas Album". Yep, that’s what I wrote a Merry book to, so think about that as you’re reading those yummy sex scenes. I wrote some of them to singing and talking vegetables talking about Jesus’ birthday. Yes, I am just that sick.

My Muse and I write better in rooms with pastel blue, or green walls. My bedroom as a child was blue, so that explains it. My first stories were written with walls that color, but why pale green? No idea, but I discovered that when my first husband would take me with him to a hobby store he liked and I didn’t. So I had nothing to do for hours but sit in the corner and scribble in my notebook. For some reason those awful pale green walls just made my Muse explode. I wrote copious pages in that place. People are sensitive to color, so find out what color works for you and paint your room, or at least the wall you stare at when you write that color. Don’t be ashamed if its a pastel, just embrace your muse and paint that wall.

When no music, no color, no hot beverage works, my Muse and I go out to work. I’ve written Anita books at Red Lobster (before my shellfish allergy manifested). I’ve written several books at St. Louis Bread Co. A lot of OBSIDIAN BUTTERFLY, Anita book #9 was written there. I have no idea why I like to write at the Bread Co (Panera in your part of the country) but again don’t question your Muse, just pay attention to her. I will admit when they painted their walls this orangey yellowy color it threw me off but its still a good place to go. You can eat, drink something, stake out a table. I take my Bose sound dampening headphones and my iPod and I write. I haven’t worked out like that in years. I love my new office. Though if I have another day like today I may try it. Though instead of long hand in a notebook I take a portable computer and have since about book 9 of Anita. I love writing on computer. So easy to fix things, so much better than typing which is how I did my first short stories.

In future blogs about writing I’ll talk about other things my Muse and I like. Sticky notes, windows vs walls, what to put on your desk and what to keep away from it, quotes, perfectionism, and my writer’s notebook, but tonight my Muse and I are retiring to a hot bath.  Happy Writing Everyone, be careful out there, or should I say, be careful in there. A writer’s mind can be a very scary place.  Or maybe that’s just mine?

 

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Happy Mabon everyone! It’s Autumn equinox with day and night of equal length. From this point on the nights will grow longer until on Winter Solstice we will have the longest night of the year. But today we all get as much sunshine as darkness. It is a harvest festival primarily. It’s a chance to think about what you’ve harvested so far this year. We have a tradition that we do either at Lammas which is in early August and is supposed to celebrate the first harvest, or here at Mabon near the end of the growing year. We’ve gone back and forth but have finally decided that it makes more sense here.

We will have a family dinner prepared by either all, or most of the family and then we will sit around the table and tell what we have harvested this year. Since most of us don’t work with the land or with food animals, harvest has a wider definition. Say, you wanted to meet a new person to date. At the beginning of the year, which for us begins just after Samhain, Halloween, you would write out a list of things you could do to help you find someone new to date. Then at Mabon you see how you’re doing on that goal. If you haven’t progressed much on the list you have until the end of October to get cracking on that. If you have done all on your list but have still not got any progress, then Mabon is a time to reassess what else you can do, or why its not working. If you have that new girlfriend, or boyfriend, then that’s what you’ve harvested. You can also list things that weren’t planned that neatly, but were things you learned, or purchased, in the year.

Example for me: I will have harvested the pages I’ve written. The novella, FLIRT, the last Anita book, SKIN TRADE was finished after Halloween last year so it counts, and I have a great deal of the new Merry book DIVINE MISDEMEANORS written, so that counts, too. I learned a lot this year about myself, about my friends, my family, and how we all interact. Jon and I have grown as a couple, and Trinity gets bigger and more the person she will be when she grows up every day. I have done a lot of serious meditation work and traveled farther on my spiritual path. I have been blessed with new people coming into my life to help me learn, and with many old friends that are a comfort when all the newness gets to be a bit too much. We have three new employees that are working out wonderfully. So our little company has grown, and in these economic times growth is something to truly celebrate. I have gone back to the gym and am weight lifting again. My ankle is so much better than it was this time last year. Good health is a really good thing to be able to add to your list of harvests.

What do I want to accomplish before Samhain? Finishing DIVINE MISDEMEANORS, the last rewrites on the novella, FLIRT, and I’ll see my other novella "Can He Bake a Cherry Pie" out in October. It’s the first story I’ve written that isn’t Anita or Merry in a very long time. It’s in the anthology, NEVER AFTER. Trinity will have her birthday. Jon and I will have our 8th wedding anniversary. I hope to get better acquainted with new friends and reacquainted with old ones.

Now when we go around the table I wouldn’t say all of the above, because if everyone did that we’d never get to eat. So, I will pick one, or two things, and so will everyone else. We’ll talk about what we wanted this year to be, and what it turned out to be, because this year, like most years was full of surprises, most of them good. So, Happy Mabon everyone, and may your own harvest this year have been full of blessings.

 

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