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Juicy

January 19, 2006 by Jane · Comments Off

I’m really grumpy. It might be the dieting–my body isn’t used to this, thinks it’s just plain wrong to be deprived and I quietly agree but am hoping my determination didn’t hear that–and it might be the writing. Which isn’t happening. Because a) I’m dieting and hungry and tired, and b) I’m without childcare and busy and stressed.

BUT, seeing as the above is part of life, I still have to find a way to write, especially as my agent and Warner editor are both impatiently waiting for the new proposal to be finished.

Well, I’m waiting, too. Take a number. Get in line.

I have been working on the proposal. It’s just that I’m operating under the peculiar 2+1= -5 writing practice at the moment. And writers know what this is. It’s where you write 2 new paragraphs, add it to the page you already had and suddenly, after making a few changes and a couple revisions, you’re minus five pages.

Let me say that again for those of you who aren’t Aquarian: my writing right now is subtracting pages from the accumulated pages. Somehow. Because nothing sounds good, and it doesn’t quite work. And I’m trying not to edit as I write, but I can’t totally silence the critic who is murmuring over my shoulder, “Hmmm, that’s rather bad, isn’t it? Doesn’t exactly say anything, and might make sense in chapter 6, but here? And who are these characters? Have you even established motivation. I don’t think so. And is this woman, Taylor, likeable? Noooooo. Not really. Not at all.” And so on. Suffice it to say, I’m not getting a lot done.

So I’m yawning and staring at the ceiling and wondering if my jeans are starting to fit a little better. (They’re not. And why not? Five days dieting and I should have at least dropped two clothes sizes. Huh.)

To make matters worse, my agent’s words keep ringing in my head, too. “Juicy. Write something juicy,” she says. And I love Karen Solem, she’s a brilliant agent and has helped me sell two books to Warner now. But there are times I want to jump up on my desk and snarl like a rabid dog/wolf (so much more visually interesting to add a wolf to the dog, don’t you think?). “Why don’t you write something juicy, Karen? And I’ll see if I can sell it.”

Obviously I can’t do that. For one, I can’t exactly spring on top of my desk. My back would seize up. And two, there’s not enough room due to my desktop to really pull off a rabid canine, although I still think the dog/wolf visual is a good one.

So, I’m going to write something juicy, like the theme song from Desperate Housewives. (juicy….) and if I can’t do that, then I�ll just pull out the blender and make a delicious Mango Daiquiri.

Menthol Woman

January 17, 2006 by Jane · Comments Off

There are considerable advantages to a long distance boyfriend. I only have to shave my legs when I see him, thus saving me from nicks and cuts for weeks at a time. I can leave my hair curly, only flat ironing before he arrives thus creating the impression that I’ve naturally straight shiny hair. I can wear sweats and schleppy plaid pjs and he doesn’t have a clue that I never officially get dressed the last week or two I’m on deadline. (I know, I’m cheating, but I make my living creating fiction and I can’t stop now.)

And now I’m grateful for the distance because long distance boyfriend can’t smell me. You see, tonight I’ve slathered myself in arnica gel and a menthol laced rub because I hurt. I’ve been pushing it at the gym and I’m suffering. Every time I stand or sit my quads and hammies go, ‘hey! Watch it, sister.’ And I’m trying to watch it, but it’s past the point of no return. I’m sore and I’m grimacing as I climb my stairs at home but I have to do this. Things were getting out of hand. I was pinching more than an inch at my waist and it wasn’t just my body complaining, it was my head.

I’ve lost focus, as well as incentive and my energy’s just shot.

In the past year, I eased off the grueling workouts, spent a lot of time on the road, and enjoyed more than my fair share of fruity tropical drinks in Hawaii. And my hips, as well as my attitude, showed it.

Now I’m back to training hard so I can start writing hard again. I need to get my body disciplined so the mind will become better disciplined. My goal this year is to write some great books–not necessarily a lot of books–but books that challenge me, and demand me to think, to question, to analyze and channel into interesting fiction. For me to successfully do this, I’ve got to get my head on straight. Which means beefing up my cardio and pushing my muscles until the endurance is there.

I don’t do New Years resolutions, but I’m constantly regrouping and I’ve done a huge regroup in the past week. I’m back to thinking positive. I’m determined to have a great year, and it will be, if I lay the right foundation by building up my energy, developing stamina, and increasing my confidence.

Which also means I’m going to be popping some Advil nightly and rubbing the achy, sore muscles with arnica and menthol and hoping the aches and menthol won’t be necessary by the next time I see that faraway boyfriend of mine. Because as much as sexy younger boyfriend likes me, he might not appreciate a menthol scented woman.

Viva Las Vegas

January 11, 2006 by Jane · Comments Off

I’m dashing off to the aiport in a bit for a noon flight to Las Vegas. I’m going for just a night and will be home in time for dinner tomorrow. My great friend, the Australian romance writer Lilian Darcy, is there with her family now and as I don’t get to see her often, I jumped at the chance to meet her for dinner and spend an hour or two tomorow morning by the pool discussing books, agents, publishers and careers.

I’m not really packing anything, heels and a top for dinner, a swimsuit and wrap for the pool, a book to read on the plane (Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister). Lilian’s one of the friends I treat to tea every year when she’s able to fly to the US for RWA’s national conference and definitely one of the most gifted writers I’ve read.

Time with my writer friends is different than time spent with non-writer friends. Writer friends can be work—together, we usually discuss work–writing. The business of writing. The art of writing. The deadlines, the edits, the advances, the industry that seems to be if not in perpetual crisis, then perpetual change.

Unlike many of my successful writer friends, I feel as if I fight my stories more, wrestle with the process more. Lately, when I write, I feel like I’m wrestling with one of the dinosaurs in the new Kong movie. It’s really hard. I will do any and everything to put off those first fifty sentences. Well, I’ll do anything but write and workout. I’ll do all the easy stuff. Answer email, pay bills, clean house, pluck eyebrows. But motivating myself to workout–and then actually do it–has become as impossible as sitting down and just writing a new scene.

I was reading through some of my writing craft books and in one, the one that deals with writing from the left side of the brain, it says that resistance always means something. Yes, it means I dom’t want to do it. Why? Why don’t I want to do it, because another part of me really wants to do it. Another part of me is so frustrated with Resistant Jane that it’s crying with frustration and gesturing pleadingly to just let me work.

It sounds crazy and sometimes it feels crazy. Maybe I need an even stricter routine where I have fewer choices and less time to think, and reflect, and resist. I’ve got to stop analyzing and asking so many questions and just do it.

Right?

Right. And I will. As soon as I get back from Vegas.

Revision Confession

January 9, 2006 by Jane · Comments Off

In theory, I embrace revisions. Revisions give me a chance to improve a book, to take a good story and make it great. Revisions mean I can identify themes, strengthen characters and motivation, and hone dialogue. Revisions are good. And sometimes they’re easy. And sometimes they’re really hard.

I just wrapped up hard revisions last night. After four 17 hour writing days in a row, I completed the revisions on my Harlequin Hollywood story. I think the book is definitely better now. Or at least, its different than it was now. Maybe its not better at all. Maybe I made just a lot of new, and worse, choices during the revision process.

I thought these revisions were going to be easy. I thought it was a slam dunk–add some lines here, add some lines there, build on character, clarify motivation, delete a scene, add to the resolution…turns out, it wasn’t a slam dunk at all. What I thought would take me maybe a day, took four days where I started at my computer at 7 am and didn’t finish until close to midnight every night.

It started, of course, with chapter one. And three days later, I was still working on chapter one. A tweak here, a tweak there, and suddenly I had another version, and the versions just kept getting worse.

Here’s a little known fact about rewriting: the more you do it, sometimes the worse the writing gets. It’s true. We can rewrite and edit our prose–and voice–to death. While rewriting, we’re so intent on getting it ‘right’, that we come back at the same lines, again and again, tightening, layering, fixing, fleshing out until the words are thick and heavy and pedantic. It’s like poor little Heidi wearing her entire wardrobe as she climbs the Swiss Alps to her grandfather’s house. She’s got so many layers on, the poor girl can hardly move, and maybe she can get up the mountain, but its not graceful or quick.

I don’t want my writing, especially my chapter 1, to be Heidi waddling her way up the Alpine slope. I want my chapter 1 to read fast, to grab the reader and drag them into the story by the throat and keep him there until the book ends, but the way my revisions were going, chapter 1 just kept getting thicker, and slower, and as I read it, I realized, it’d lost its energy, lost its sense of movement and had become a chapter 1 of telling, instead of doing. In the rewrite, I managed to edit out the action and leave only exposition. How?

Here I am, a reasonably competent writer, so how did I lose the energy and buzz and excitement that should jump start every new book?

It was by thinking too hard, trying too hard, layering in too much and not seeing that chapter 1 is just a teaser, a taste of what’s to come. You don’t have to answer everything in chapter 1. That’s why you’ve another 14 or 22 chapters. The point of chapter 1 is just to get the reader started.

Fortunately, after three days of rewriting twenty pages, I returned to my first attempt at revising chapter 1, saved that, used that and finally moved on to chapter 2. The rest of the revision moved along more briskly as well. I gave myself permission to stop analyzing quite so hard–overthinking kills creativity–and just use my gut. I’ve good instincts and I pressed myself to write fast, to believe in the subconscious and my unmangeable muse, and get it done.

And guess what? It worked. So the next time you get a revision letter, or a rejection letter and you want to revise, here’s the way I tackle rewriting:

1) Read points and revision suggestions–all the way through.

2) Sleep on letter and reread again next day.

3) Take coffee break or brisk walk and return to letter. Highlight points that are easy, note points and suggestions that are questionable.

4) Tackle easy points and changes first.

5) Dive into more challenging revisions next, but focusing on one problem at a time to keep from being overwhelmed.

6) Cross off each change–congratulate yourself on handling revisions like a pro.

7) When revisions are completed, reread through revision letter and make sure you took care of everything asked, or anything problematic.

8) Send off revised manuscript.

9) Celebrate.

Blink

January 4, 2006 by Jane · Comments Off

While in Hawaii this past week I read a fascinating book titled Blink. It was in hard cover, and expensive, but it grabbed me in the prologue and kept my attention the entire time and I talked about it with friends on the beach, and to others by the pool, and ended up leaving my copy behind so my boyfriend could read it next.

Blink looks at thin-slicing life, those two seconds where we dissect a situation, whether by instinct, knowledge, or a combination of the two and those two seconds–especially if instinct is honed by education–we know nearly everything we need to know. In those first seconds. In the blink of an eye.

I loved the book because it drew on mountains of research and psychological analysis. It took examples from sport, marriage counseling, military, anthropological studies and demonstrated what a profound instrument the mind is. How we compute wildly diverse bits of information in milliseconds and how this process is good, and how–if we’re ignorant–it’s dangerous.

Another favorite lesson learned was the reminder that whatever we put in our heads, eventually comes out, and if put put in negative thoughts, we’ll create negative situations. Even if we don’t want to. But the brain processes what it gets, and the face–the face!–doesn’t just reveal what we feel on the inside, but the actual expressions of the face, imprint on our minds and create the emotions and thoughts from the outside in. In short, if we even look sad, we will feel sad, because the muscles are hardwired all the way through and the tugging down of the lips, and the pinch of the brows creates stress and the release of cortisol and increases the heart rate. Thus, ‘put on a happy face’ might be more important than we ever knew.

I like books like Blink. I like the research and the layering of fields of study. I like to apply the lessons to my life, as well as to the process of writing. As I read, I’d put the book down repeatedly and see how the information could aid the creative life. Or just life in general. Because it’s not enough to just get through life. We shouldn’t let life shape us. We should shape life. We should reduce the negatives, increase the positives, and live more. Live big. Live fully.

New Year

January 3, 2006 by Jane · Comments Off

It’s finally the new year and I’ve been waiting for this one for awhile. It’s not that I didn’t like the old year, but it wasn’t the easiest year and I’ve this rather silly optimism that says a new year has to be better–or easier–than the last year, which is almost like saying, the grass is greener on the other side of the fence, and we all know what that means….don’t we?

But what if the grass is greener. It’s possible. With a really good irrigation system, automatic sprinklers with a rain sensor, and feeding and springtime seeding, you could have a lawn that’s nothing short of nirvana. And the neighbor next door, might be a dedicated gardener, and well, he really might have a lush lawn that is better than mine.

And that’s kind of what I’m hoping will happen with 2006. I’m hoping it’s going to be lush and (more) relaxing. The kind of year where you just stretch out and close your eyes and soak up the sun and feel good. Not worried, not competitive, not fearful, not insecure. But good. And happy. And creative.

And productive.

Maybe that’s the part where I get confused. I feel like I need to be more productive, I feel as though I’m getting lazy, but in my laziest year as a writer, I still wrote 3 books. Two for Harlequin and one for Warner. I had a ten week book tour. I did a ton of workshops. Is that really lazy?

But it seems lazy when I compare it to writer friends who are producing six books a year. Or the friend who had seven books out this year. Or the friend that wrote three mainstream novels, three category and three novellas. I wish I could do that, but I don’t have enough words. I don’t know where I’d begin to get that many words. My words come to me more slowly. Much more slowly. I spend lots of time at my computer just staring at the screen. And even more time deleting entire paragraphs written. Happily, I like writing better than I have in years. I’m happier writing. I feel creative and challenged and engaged.

So I guess I’ve already got a great year–I’m right where I want to be professionally, and personally things feel better than they have in years. The kids and I just had a great ten days in Hawaii and tomorrow we fly back to Seattle to return to school and writing. I’ve revisions for my last Harlequin book to tackle and the Warner proposal to nail down, and then a new idea for Harlequin I’m anxious to jump on. So yes, the grass is plenty green and there’s no reason to hop the fence, or envy the neighbor or covet his lawn. I have what I need. I like who I am. And sometimes its just a matter of keeping it all in perspective.

Happy New Year. May we all have lush lawns in 2006.

In The Beginning

December 13, 2005 by Jane · Comments Off

My Harlequins are relatively easy for me to start. They start at the point where everything changes–usually when hero and heroine meet and realize (immediately) their goals are in opposition.

Starting the single title books for Warner have not been as easy. Trying to find the right way to open this coming summer’s Flirting with Forty took me weeks and many rewrites. I just couldn’t find the right place, moment, idea, tone. My agent, Karen Solem, sent me back to the drawing board. My editor, Karen K, sent me back to the drawing board. But then last December, I took the boys shopping for a Christmas tree and it was such a long, wet, miserable, lonely night that I had a ‘what if’ moment and I found my opening scene and a new chapter 1-3. I sold the book, wrote the rest, and am getting ready to finish my proposal for book 3 for Warner. Only problem? The Beginning.

I know who my two main protagnoists are–Taylor Young and her nemesis Marta Zinsser. I know I used to like–Marta Zinsser–and who I couldn’t find emotionally accessible. But within the past week several things happened that made me go, ‘oh. OH. Oh, really…’ And what if moments were born.

What if Taylor isn’t really as conservative as she seems on the outside? What if she has a little secret that’s relatively innocent but makes her far more interesting (at least to me, the author, because I’m going to spend a lot of time with her this coming year.)

What if Marta has unwittingly contributed to her daughter’s isolation by choosing to break rank and file with the other moms?

What if I’ve finally found the right moment where everything starts to change, that inciting incident in Christopher Vogler’s The Writer’s Journey, and I just get Taylor and Marta in the same room from the beginning, and it’s like junior high all over again?

And after weeks of character sketches and brainstorming and outlining and wondering, I have a juicy place to start, because that’s what my agent says—don’t try to write as though this next book is Important. Write something Juicy.

You see, the idea for the beginning of this new book came out of Sunday’s night mayhem. I learned today in a flurry of emails, phone calls and police reports that Sunday night was a wild night for my whole neighborhood. Police departments from four towns were involved in sealing off the perimeter of our area(we live on a little point that juts into Lake Washington), and by tracking with dogs, they were able to corner the bad guys and eventually apprehend around 6:20 in the morning. And while the neighbors are relieved the immediate danger is gone, I’m just thrilled. I finally have my beginning.

Break Ins & Break Downs

December 12, 2005 by Jane · Comments Off

I just finished a book last night at 1:30 am and emailed it out to my editor in U.K. It was a very tough write. It was beyond a tough write. I felt like I’d never written a Harlequin Presents before. The book had been due October 31st, and then November 27th and then at the absolute latest–Dec 9th. My editor got it December 12th. And to make sure she got it then, I wrote 7 chapters between Friday 9 am and Sunday night 1:30 pm. Sunday was grueling. Nineteen hours writing, with only two 30 minutes breaks. What’s my secret? Hysteria. The kind that suddenly glues your butt to your chair and only allows you to get up to get more liquids and then pee the same liquids forty minutes later.

I don’t know why I couldn’t get this book to come together sooner. I don’t know why it had to become some Herculean task. But it did. And that Herculean struggle became part of the book, with my hero, Spanish-Irish Wolf Kerrick, feeling as though he had these tests.

I wish my editor at Harlequin knew how grateful I am to be a Harlequin author with a wonderful line, and fantastic editorial support. I don’t take any of it for granted. I love finishing books. I love seeing them in print. I love the reader emails and those Amazon reviews. But I don’t always love the writing where I’m flailing in a mud-like quicksand, trying to find the theme. Plots are easy. But the theme, the ‘material’, that’s what slays me. I can’t just write a book that’s sexy or clever, for some wretched masochistic reason, my books must resonate (for me) with something larger, something symbolic. And lest you think, ‘Jane, what a pretentious ass you are,’ can I just say….I don’t want to be this way. I don’t like writing this way. I don’t like bleeding and sweating and crying over the keyboard. Unfortunately, I don’t have another process. I’ve got the one where I think about the book for a month or so, start writing scenes and getting to know characters for another week or two, and then when I’m two to three weeks from the book’s deadline, I knuckle down. And then when I’ve only a week left and 9 chapters to write, I do the cold panic hysteria thing and write 40-70 pages a day. And to do that I pretty much throw crackers at my kids, forgo all but the most necessary hygienic practice (teeth must be brushed minimum once a day and one bath or shower daily, too. Hair *might* be combed but I doubt it).

But book did get done and I sent it in, and went to bed at 1:45 am exhausted but relieved I’d finally done what I needed to do.

And then came the big crash as someone kicked my door in at 2:14 and while I stood shivering, and dazed, at the top of the stairs, the phone rang. It was the Bellevue police dispatch calling to say someone was in my house and the police were about to enter and I needed to find a secure room, lock the door and stay there.

Okay, maybe my Harlequins have a little purple prose when it comes to the love scenes, but let me say–fear can make one’s heart pound, stomach fall, and legs turn to cement. Terror slows time and not knowing is far worse than knowing. But that’s another story.

The point is, my book got turned in before the break in and the break down. And that, in the case of a very late book, is really the only thing my editor wants to know.

Quick note�did you know we should have a safe room in our homes? Someplace to go and lock the door when the bad guys come? I didn�t know. But I do now.

Those Wonderful Emotions

November 24, 2005 by Jane · Comments Off

I was asked recently by a young beautiful French Canadian woman studying psychology in Hawaii if I was an emotional person, and if so, did my emotions benefit my writing?

The woman said her psych professor at the university said many artists draw on their own emotions to create.

I was unusually uncomfortable answering her.

Not because she was wrong, but because I didn’t know her, didn’t know her background, didn’t know if a sixty second, or six minute answer would tell her what she wanted, or if I would only make things more confusing.

Yes, I’m emotional.

Yes, my emotions power my writing.

Yes, artists draw on their emotions, memories and experiences to create.

But that doesn’t necessarily make writing, or creating, easier. Sometimes the emotions make writing harder. Sometimes the emotions make writing impossible.

The trick for me to write well is to be calm, relaxed, and yet remember the intensity of emotion–the pain, the hope, the joy, the sadness. Because trying to write when very sad, or even very happy, is like settling a frisky puppy down to a sedate walk, or attempting to get a hobbled horse to gallop. Its not impossible, just difficult. Instead, I’ve learned to write, create, when I’m in the position to reflect on the life well lived rather then when I’m in the middle of the tempest.

I have written some of my favorite scenes when in the middle of the tempest, and indeed, those pages are cathartic, they allow me to voice a grief or longing I wouldnt otherwise be allowed to put into words, but that fire, that fever, that rawness still requires fiction, requires a film of story and thicker application of structure to make it palpable for the reader.

The reader you see is suspicious.

The reader requires gentle persuasion.

The reader wants honesty and power, the reader wants intensity, provided it works.

Provided the reader isn’t alienated.

And that’s the trick for me, an emotional writer.

I must somehow write with feeling, with power, with intensity, with conviction, but always, always, the story must be there.

So it’s a see saw, a balance between reason and emotion, logic and passion. A good story combines both, layers both so that it’s a marriage of magic and industriousness, of imagination and application. Story can always be improved. Story can be fixed.

And after plot and pacing have been tightened, the best way to improve story is by unleashing the passion, by notching up the tension and passion. Heighten the stakes. Up the ante. Go for the jugular, especially with the emotion.

If I were less emotional, I’d probably writer funnier stories, lighter books. If I were less emotional, I wouldn’t intentionally tug on readers heart-strings (much less my own).

But then again, if I were less emotional I might not be a writer at all.

And as I answered the beautiful French Canadian student, yes, writing can be cathartic, but not everything can be used at once in a book. It’s taken me time and practice to know what works in a story, and what doesn’t.

There are stories I’ve lived, experiences had, that can’t go into books, that won’t get into print. At least not yet, even if they’d make great reading. Because even some of those most remarkable stories are personal, private. I think of my mother as I write this. I think of my mother who has lived a life that others would call fictional in its mythic quality.

My mother’s entire story will never be told out of respect for her, as well as the terrible tenderness I still feel when I remember parts of the past but I have and will use emotion generated, as well as some of those memories, to create fiction that touches readers minds and hearts. I have to. I don’t know any other way to write.

Chisel and Stone

November 14, 2005 by Jane · Comments Off

I returned home from my conference in Chesapeake, Virginia to discover that my 5th grade son hadn’t done his math report or this month’s book report. It was a huge surprise, especially as I didn’t know he had a math report and he’d told me the book report wasn’t due for another week or so.

Hmmm. Not good. Especially as this isn’t the first time it’s happened. We’ve been doing this report denial thing for years. Country report, cultural report, science fair, history project, you name it, if it’s a big report or project requiring research, note taking, compilation of notes, writing, revision and an impressive, creative error free finished project, it’s not going to happen, at least not in my son’s mind. He’s not going to bring the assignment home. He’s not even going to read the assignment. He’s just going to bury the paper in his desk and pretend the assignment doesn’t exist.

Now, has he ever been able to get away with not doing a huge report? No. Has he found the consequences of not doing a report, and/or not starting it early (versus the night before, or the day after) enjoyable? No. So why the absolute melt-down in the face of big projects? He’s overwhelmed. He’s a big picture guy, likes the big picture, enjoys things fun and open-ended, and he can’t figure out how to get from point A to point G. He doesn’t know how to break a project down into smaller, more manageable bits. It’s just one horrendous overwhelming, frightening, and exhausting nightmare. A nightmare best dealt with by avoidance, aversion, and denial.

And you know, after I’m done yelling and being the righteous former schoolgirl/teacher, I totally get it. I totally relate.

In fact, it wasn’t until I bumped into a friend and fellow writer, Karen Hughes, at Ooba’s restaurant in Redmond last week, that I realized how overwhelmed I felt about starting my new book for Harlequin. Like my son, I had the assignment, I had the due date, and I had incentive–I just couldn’t get going.

But when I saw Karen at Ooba’s, and we sat at the counter during lunch talking about writing (or in my case, not writing), I realized avoidance wasn’t going to get me anywhere. I’ve written books before, just like my son has written reports before, but that doesn’t make starting them any easier for either of us. It doesn’t make the pressure go away, or the fears and self-doubt vanish. It doesn’t make the writing time shorter or the process smoother. It just means we�ve tackled difficult challenges and eventually succeeded.

As Karen told me about the progress she’s made in her writing, and how good she feels about her recent finished manuscript, I envied her energy and confidence. The best writing is confident writing. Writing where you charge it, go for it, believing that what you need to say, will (eventually) get said, believing that the story you want and need to tell, will (eventually) get told is writing that sells, and writing that touches others.

As I left lunch and prepared to fly out to Virginia the next day, I knew it was time for me to start writing again. But the question of how, remained. How do I do it? How do I find the words? How do I find the excitement, the energy, the passion to sit alone, apart from everyone, and focus, and write?

Like my son, I didn’t have the answers. I didn’t want the answers. Because if I got the answers, it’d mean I’d have to do it. I’d have to write the book, just as he’d have to do the project, and we’d both have to work, and working isn’t always easy, or immediately gratifying.

But because my son had me squashing him and pressing him, he sat down this last Thursday and started working.

But I don’t have anyone sitting on me, squashing me, pressing me to produce pages. I just have me. And once the passion to write is there, I’m good, but finding the passion can be tricky.

So last Thursday I knew I had to jump all over me. I had to get serious. It was time to stop worrying and avoiding and just get down to it. If I was going to yell at Jake, I’d yell at myself, too. If I told Jake, the best way to start a report was by breaking the project into smaller, more manageable pieces, then I’d do the same. Obviously he couldn’t read the book and write the report in one day, he�d have to do it in pieces, over time. But clearly, the key was getting started. The only way to get anything done, is by starting in the first place. I’d never get my book for Harlequin done, if I didn�t start, either.

So Thursday was start day. Just like first diet day. It’s a today’s the day mind set. No more excuses, no more binge eating, no more little Halloween chocolates and candy. Today is the day. In fact, this very minute is the minute.

Thursday I had a babysitter come over for two hours and I went to a local Starbucks with one goal: to write for those two hours. At the end of two hours I had to go home, regardless of the number of pages completed, so I just dove in. I wrote what I could, as best I could. To be honest, it hurt. It was ugly. Uncomfortable. The writing was jerky and repetitive, with lots and lots of false starts and sentences that were left dangling and fragments of dialogue. But I stuck with it and when I got home found I had 6 pages. They weren�t great pages. Not even good pages. But they were more than I had when I woke up that morning.

Friday, I did the same. I ended up with 7 pages, although the writing felt somewhat better.

Saturday, 10 pages.

Sunday, I only had ninety minutes but got 8 pages.

I haven�t written yet today but will soon.

Today Jake also returned to school with both reports finished. He’s exhausted and I’m exhausted from staying on top of him. But I’m also relieved. I�m relieved he�s gotten his work done, and relieved I�m writing again.

But that doesn’t mean the writing is easy and the words are flowing. Right now the writing is like taking a chisel to stone. I’m just chipping away, pounding the edge of the chisel against the stone, hammering, hammering, and little splinters of marble fly and I’m not getting anywhere fast. You can’t even see what I’m trying to make. There’s nothing here but formless cuts and chips. But I know–with that confidence of having completed difficult things before–that somewhere in the middle of this hulking piece of stone, is something beautiful and real. And I’m going to find it, I know I can. I just have to be patient. I have to keep pounding away, bit by bit, day by day.

Eventually I will have a book. Eventually the writing will become easier and the story will be mine and it just takes time. Effort. Discipline. Oh, and confidence.