Tag: Anita

The moon hangs in the sky glowing like white-gold. I can see it as I write this, and I see the beauty of it, I do. I’ve found a new band that I’m loving, Imagine Dragons. I’ve got their album up full volume roaring around me. All three dogs are scattered through the office asleep even with the happy thud of music. I was never allowed indoor pets as a child, and having the dogs fulfills a wish I’ve had since I was very small.

I’m in the middle of a great scene with Anita about to wade into a fight between the police and the undead. We have zombies! Except for the jeopardy to my imaginary friends it’s a great scene, the kind I used to love, but I’m hitting one of those moments that just happens when you’re writing a big book. I don’t know if it’s the size, so that you begin to despair at every finishing the journey, or something else. I just know it always hits somewhere between 300-500 pages when I realize that 500 won’t see me done. Yay, for you guys, more to read, but I still gotta write it and my deadline does not change. So, on one hand I’m having a great time fighting zombies on paper and seeing new facets of my characters as they rise to the occasion, but on the other hand the amount of pages stretching before me . . . it’s a little daunting. But between this sentence and last our Japanese chins woke up and invited me to play and it’s impossible to be unhappy after playing on the floor with two adorable dogs that happen to be yours. Sasquatch, our pug, watched from his bed confident I would pet him after the rough housing was over. His expectations were fulfilled, lazy ol’ pug.

I am resolved to finish this scene tonight. I’m not sure why but I feel if I get past it that some magical page barrier will be past. This feeling is usually right and once past a certain point the book gains steam and flows. I’m really looking forward to that part of the writing process. Right now, I’m stuck in the part of writing where it feels like I’m carving the words out of my own flesh. It hurts, it leaves a mark, and you begin to worry about scars, but I’ve learned that if I just keep carving eventually the right symbol is painted on my skin and the muse and I are one again. Until that time I have the moon, music, the dogs, and myself. Sometimes the solitariness of my job is not my favorite part, especially when the dark is populated with demons from old issues, but then one of the ways I exorcise my demons is by writing them out in fiction. And no, before someone asks, I have never really had to fight zombies. Sorry, fiction.