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We’ve been discussing how to organize the work here. We have lot’s of ideas, but in the end, all the ideas crash against the same barrier. Me.

I am a writer. That means that my pages can take two hours, or eight, to accomplish. It means that my best hours are the first hours of the day, so those have to be kept fresh and open, if at all possible. It means, that part of everyone’s job is to help me be able to work, because if the books don’t get done then none of the other work really matters. The books are the thing, the foundation. The comic books are great, and fun, but they’re based on the books and the world of the books. It all goes back to the novels. So, that’s the work priority. It has to be.

But, what about everything else? The comic, interviews, the blog, the newsletter, card ideas for the fan club, merch ideas for the fan club, meetings, covers to look at, artwork, more and more meetings. More demands on your time, and more coming, and the more successful you are the more demands there are, it is the nature of the beast. It is everything we all work for, but one thing keeps banging up against it. Me.

Writers need a certain amount of down time. We need time to wonder about old bookstores and libraries. Time to visit odd places, and talk to people. Time to lick our wounds and get new ones. We are odd creatures. Each of us so unique, so that what will fill one writer up, will drain another dry. An idea that will spark and burn for one writer, will just lie there on the sidewalk unnoticed and unwanted by another. You’ve got to find what feeds your muse. What keeps you going.

The more success I get, the more sympathy I have with the tabloid darlings. Success can be as deadly to your career as failure. I mean, most of us, have dealt with failure for years before we finally sell. We know how to fail, and dust ourselves off and hit it again. If you’re going to succeed as a writer you’ve got to know how to take a hit, and keep swinging. It’s a harsh business, and your ego better be able to take the beating. A little success is amazing and feels like fine champagne, but there comes a point where success begins to feel more like drowning in champagne than drinking it. You begin to feel like there’s too many people wanting your attention and not enough of you to go around. What do you do when you’ve succeeded beyond your wildest business dreams? Celebrate, yes, but what then?

I said, I’m the stumbling block for organizing the business, and I am. How do you organize a schedule that can get everything done in four hours one day, and not get done for ten the next? How do you explain that a few minutes of interruption can destroy two hours of momentum, and loose you all you’ve gained for that work session? Everything waits on the book being finished, but it’s not done. Progress was nonexistent today.

Merry won’t let me destroy everyone. Every time I think I’m getting the blood bath I wanted, she stops working with me. Today, she just dug her heels in inches from the abyss, and would not play. Tomorrow I have to take my issues off the table and let her have her gentler solution. I don’t want gentle, but it’s not my story, it’s her’s. I just write it, I don’t have to live it, she does. Merry needs to end the book her way, and I need out of this book. I need onto something more visceral, more violent, more rough. I ask Deity to help me give compassion to those who hate me, but it is not my nature, which I suppose is why I pray for help to feel it. These people have hurt Merry, and killed those she loves, they deserve to die. They’ve earned it, but she is not me. She would give life where I would give death. She would give compassion where I would give back the rage visited upon us.

How do I explain that I’m having trouble scheduling a meeting with my accountant, or my doctor, or my whatever, because my imaginary friend won’t cooperate. How do you explain that to people whose jobs deal with facts, figures, and flesh and blood people? Hell, there are days when I can’t even explain it to myself.