inspiration Archives - Laurell K. Hamilton

Edits, Travel, and the Injury at the End

I finished the edits on the next Anita Blake novel, Serpentine at the beginning of March. Jonathon, my husband, and I were already on a romantic vacation, but he helped me take time out to finish the edits that I hadn’t managed before we had to leave for our getaway. At the end I went old school: writing the changes long hand on sticky notes and handed them to Jonathon for him to type into the manuscript edits. I hadn’t written that much long hand in years, but it felt right. I’d already written the book, the edits were small things, or a scene here and there that needed changed for plot or character development. I took out one side plot that had started off as a red herring, but turned out to lead nowhere, so it had to go. I even had to cut a great new character that I hope we get to see later in another book. Larry Kirkland was a character that was actually in one of the rough drafts of the first Anita Blake novel, Guilty Pleasures, but he wouldn’t actually get on stage until book three, The Circus of the Damned. One of my favorite things about writing a series is that characters and plot lines that have to be edited out of one book can still see life later on. Interestingly, Anita, Micah, and Nathaniel try to have a romantic trip in the book, but both her work and Micah’s interfere with it. I wrote that months before Jonathon and I would be on our own trip and my work would cost us the first few days of relaxation, as if my muse knew it was coming. Of course, Anita’s work was a missing person and murder, and Micah’s work was a type of lycanthropy that we’d never seen before. My edits seem so tame in comparison.

I proceeded to take the longest purposeful break from writing that I’ve ever taken. Jonathon and I finished our trip without more work interfering. Then I got to spend our daughter’s spring break with her. My sister and her wife were able to fly into the country and visit with us. I spent all my “vacation” traveling. I’d finally get on the first plane towards home, but in the all out run to make it, I fell.

I was running full out, I was even thinking, “Wow, I can really run now. I’m so glad I can move like this, yay gym!” And then I wiped out. I did a good job of it, because kind strangers came to stand over me, making that face you make when someone hurts themselves in front of you. Thanks to the kind man who offered me a hand up, because I could not have gotten up without help. I wasn’t even sure that I’d be able to stand at all, until I tried. I was finally able to limp to my plane like Igor from the Frankenstein movies, but I was just happy to make my plane. I enjoyed my travels, but I was so ready to go home. I made my plane discovering that I was bleeding from the skin I’d lost, but I was able to walk better as I moved more. I still hurt, but I got to my seat. The flight attendant got me bandages, alcohol wipes, and eventually ice bags to put on my knee. Thanks for the care and attention Delta. Thanks also to my seat mate, Charles, who was a gentleman in the best sense of the word, putting my bag overhead for me when he saw I was hurt and helping the flight attendant pass me things to do some first aid. He also kept my mind off how much I was hurting by having an intelligent and calm discussion about our different paths of faith.

The skin is growing back from the scrapes, but I’ve either scraped my meniscus, or got a micro tear in it, which means no gym or martial arts for awhile. The page proofs of Serpentine have come back for one last chance to read over and catch any small things. It hurts to even sit at my desk for too long without propping my leg up. Sigh.

I’m looking forward to finishing the page proofs and getting back to the gym and dojo, and onto writing the next story.

Angels, Demons, and the Writer

The hardest thing about writing is that you are alone with your personal demons. Now let’s define terms; when I say demons, I mean personal issues so large, so painful, so intimately damaging, that it either cuts your soul to face them, or heals it. You don’t have to be writing about the issues that make up your personal demons to have them torment you as you write. Oh no, it’s more insidious than that, just as writing will call the muses to you, the angels come to dance around you in shining choruses, so creativity calls the demons. I’m sure there are writers out there that are so mentally and emotionally healthy that only angels come to dance around them when they create, but I’m not sure I’ve ever met one of those writers. Most of us are fairly self-torturing, emotional angst seems to come with the job description. I don’t mean we all go through life doom and gloom, oh woe is me. Some of us are fairly cheerful people, actually. What I mean is that when we sit down to write we are alone with our thoughts.

If the idea of being alone with your thoughts doesn’t give you a twinge of panic, then I’m not writing about you, but for most of the writers I know we both crave to be alone to create and dread it. Some days it’s all muse-driven inspiration and the pages flow like the proverbial water from the cleft rock. Those are the days that I love the best. The days that make me think being a writer is a great career and all I was ever meant to do, or be. Then there are days when nothing is coming down the muse-highway. I sit and I stare at the screen for hours, literally sometimes, or I write and erase, or I write and rewrite, and its all terrible. Or the writing is good enough, but it’s like dragging each word out of the void one painful inch at a time. Those are the days when I think, maybe I should have bought that horse farm, or become a field biologist, or . . . runaway and joined something, somewhere, anywhere but in this one room in front of this damned computer, trying to draw words out of thin air.

“If you can’t stand your own company alone in a room for long hours, or, when it gets tough, the feeling of being in a locked cell, or, when it gets tougher still, the vague feeling of being buried alive–then don’t be a writer.”

― Graham Swift

Your angels tell you positive things and hold hands with your muse, or sing behind her like upbeat backup singers, but your demons . . . they sing other songs. They start out with actual issues from your past, and most writers have things that haunt them, its part of what fuels most of us, but after they hit the real issues the demons move onto other things, false things, lies. Demons are those voices in your head that tell everyone, “You’re not good enough. She’d/he’d never go out with you. You’re too fat, too thin, too short, too . . . something. Your thoughts aren’t important enough to fill a whole book? That’s boring, you’re boring. People will hate your writing. They’ll reject you. She/he will reject you.” See, everyone has those negative voices in their heads that I call demons, its just that some of us have louder ones, or more persistent ones, or maybe we just don’t know how to shut them out as well as you do.

I never sweated rejection either in dating, or in writing, I accepted it as a given in both. But it was just one boy saying, no, he didn’t want to go out with me. Okay, there, done. Now I knew he wasn’t interested so I could move on and find someone who did want to date me. I always saw it as their loss, not mine. Dating you have a fifty/fifty chance, but writing is much harsher odds. Writing is designed to get you rejected.

“My first Anita Blake novel, Guilty Pleasures, was rejected over two hundred times.”

“The first thing you have to learn when you go into the arts is to learn to cope with rejection. If you can’t, you’re dead.”

― Warren Adler

I like writing quotes, they help me realize that what I’m feeling is felt by a lot of wordsmiths. I am not slogging in the literary salt mines alone, or at least while I’m digging in my mine, I know others are getting just as tired and discouraged as I am. I find that comforting, and one of the reasons I’m doing this blog is to reach out to other writers, especially the beginning ones and say, “Look it’s hard, even for me, but if I can do it, you can do it.” You are not alone.

But we are alone while we create, and most of the time that’s great. In fact a certain amount of solitude is absolutely necessary for most of us to write a novel, or even a short story. We need to be uninterrupted by real flesh and blood people while we play with our imaginary ones. But the rub is, alone with our thoughts means there’s no distraction from what’s in our heads, our hearts, our souls. We try to pour all that onto the paper and turn into fiction and share it with others, but . . . You knew there was a but, didn’t you? But the personal demons come like vultures on days when the writing is slow, and the muse is reluctant or missing in action. On days when the writing flows and shines, and it feels like magic, you can almost feel the brush of angel feathers on your cheeks, but on the other days, the hard days, if there are feathers anywhere around you, they’re black. Black isn’t a bad color necessarily, Odin’s ravens are black and He is a God of inspiration, poetry, language, and magic, so black wings can inspire and lead you to greatness, but they can also pick over the corpses of your dead dreams like carrion crows.

My demons don’t have wings of any color, or pitchforks, or any of the traditional Western ideals of devils and demons. My demons are the voices in my head that tell me, I can’t. That I’m turning perfectly good paper into garbage, or back in the day when there was no internet and everything had to be printed and mailed, “I was killing trees to no purpose.”

Those are the days when I’m most likely to post things on twitter about fighting dragons, but dragons are not demons. The latter come wherever they smell hesitation like blood in the water for sharks, they gather when they feel you weaken. A moment of doubt is all the negative voices need to whisper horrible things in your ear. One of the ways I chase them back, force them to shut up and leave me alone to create is to pick up my metaphorical shield and sword and go hunting the dragon. I see it as taking the fight to the monster, rather than letting the monster have the upper hand. On a bad day, the dragon wins, but I know that I will take up my sword, my pen, my keyboard, the next day and I will fight on.

I’m going to stop writing the blog now, because that can be a distraction from the actual purpose of writing novels. Blogs are so fast and so much easier than writing a novel, especially on days when the demons are loud in my head. I’ll leave you with some more quotes that seem appropriate for the topic of inspiration, personal demons, personal Angels, and dragons.

“If I got rid of my demons, I’d lose my angels.”

― Tennessee Williams, Conversations with Tennessee Williams

“An artist is a creature driven by demons. He doesn’t know why they choose him and he’s usually too busy to wonder why.”

― William Faulkner

“You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.”

– Jack London

“Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.”

― G.K. Chesterton

People on the outside think there’s something magical about writing, that you go up in the attic at midnight and cast the bones and come down in the morning with a story, but it isn’t like that. You sit in back of the typewriter and you work, and that’s all there is to it.

– Harlan Ellison

What Feeds Your Muse?

People ask, what inspires me, well nature inspires me. My short story, “Geese”, came from me walking out my door years ago and seeing Canadian geese settling down for the night on the shores of a lake. I have a biology degree, as well as an English degree, and I have always found equal inspiration in nature and in words. Though I think that nature feeds my soul a little bit more than it feeds my writing. What follows is my early morning. It didn’t translate into many pages for the day, but it was a mood recharging beginning, and sometimes as a writer you need that more than pages.

My first animal of the morning, besides our three dogs, was a chipmunk. How can anyone look at a chipmunk and not smile? Then worms were fleeing across the walkway, well, as fast as worms can flee. I looked to see what the disturbance was and – mole! I watched the earth heave and roll as the little digger chased worms underground. Worms, especially earthworms, are some of their favorite foods. Yes, moles disturb your lawn, but they also aerate it, which is something we pay men with machines to do, right? Why not let the mole do it for free? They will also eat harmful grubs that destroy your lawn, flowers, and vegetable garden. By the way moles have the softest fur I’ve ever touched, though today’s mole never let me see him/or her at all. I carry the memory of the mole that got into our house in Indiana like a sensory touchstone. Mole fur makes mink feel rough.

I saved one worm that got lost on the bricks, and put him away from the mole’s hunting area, and then a bird sang high and bubbling in the holly tree just beside the house. It sang out several times the sweetness of the song falling down around me as if joy could be translated into sound. I’ve checked and double checked and the small bird that I barely could glimpse through the thick branches, I believe was a field sparrow. They are supposed to like more prairie than we have in our yard, but we do have a hedgerow area, and with habitat vanishing maybe they’ve gotten more adventuresome, or maybe he was just passing through for the running water. We’re getting birds to the water that wouldn’t normally bother with suburbia. It might have been a warbler who’s song I’m unfamiliar with, but it moved more like a sparrow, and wasn’t quite as small as most of the warblers I see in this area. I’m always loathe to bird just by ear – I don’t seem to trust it without another birder to say, “Yes, that’s the song.” But for right now I think it was a Field Sparrow, and whatever bird it was, another male answered in the distance. I’ll have to check that direction and see if there’s a grassy field area. If I’m closer to the right habitat then them coming for the water makes more sense.

To top it off I had a pair of Cedar Waxwings just outside my office in the big sugar maple right by the pond. They are one of my favorite birds! I never saw any until just a few years ago. They love the water garden. One of our robins chased them off, because Waxwings are fruit eaters and so are the robins. Everyone is raising babies, so they guard their food sources.

Will any of the above translate into more story ideas? I don’t know, but one thing I’m learning is anything that fills up the tank of my energy, creativity, or happiness is useful in some way. I spent too many years trying to just write without thinking about where the creativity comes from, or what feeds my muse, what feeds me. In the last year I’ve really looked hard at that, and one of the first things that sparked that excitement that is so necessary for an artist, or a scientist was ladybugs and irises. I remember squatting in the grass by a tree, pushing the grass aside and finding a cluster of ladybugs like bright red and black jewels, so shiny in the sun when I revealed their hiding place. There were purple bearded irises growing against the white picket fence. I stood and gazed up at them as they rose above me. It was the white picket fence and irises, that my grandmother had never mentioned to me that convinced her it was a real memory. We’d rented the house so briefly that she’d almost forgotten it herself, but it bothered her that I remembered it, almost scared her, because babies under two aren’t supposed to remember details like that. I don’t remember anything else about the house, but the wonder of those tall flowers, and the cluster of insects, that first sharp smell of ladybugs as I poked at them with my fingers, that remains. Flowers, insects, birds, mammals, reptiles, all of it can still fill me with wonder and joy. It still feeds a part of me that first toddled out into the sunshine to stare up at flowers taller than I was like some pre-school Alice in Wonderland. As an artist you need to find out what feeds your inner child, because a sense of wonder needs to be a permanent part of you as an artist. I know it’s cool to get jaded and world weary like Hemingway, or Fitzgerald, and Gods know that I can get weary of the world, but if I let it make me feel jaded I lose something I need to create. It harms something I inside me if I forget to admire the beauty and life around me. Think back to your earliest happy memory, what was it? What thrilled you as a child? Usually whatever that was is something you still need in your life. It will refresh your heart, cleanse your soul of that harshness that seems to gather. It will feed your muse.

“The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers; –
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away . . .”

William Wordsworth (1710-1850)

Don’t give your heart away, you need it to create, to love, to be.

The picture is of me about the same age that I saw those irises and ladybugs. That may even be the same house. That’s my mother with me. She died when I was six, and she was twenty-nine.

The Ordinary Extrodinary

I sat at the corner of the kitchen island at 6:42 AM eating breakfast, and gazed towards the hall, and the dining room beyond, a shine caught my eye. The sparkle comes and goes, there, then not. I realized that it was the morning sun reflecting on the Grandfather clock’s pendulum, so that not only the pendulum shines, but the reflection goes out into the hallway flashing gold here, then gone, here, then gone. It’s a tiny golden road in the middle of the hallway that lasts only seconds at a time.

I’ve lived in this house for twelve years and never noticed this before. There is always more to see and notice in the everyday surroundings. The old isn’t just made new again, it is new. Because I’m not rediscovering the shine of the clock as it paces the hallway, but seeing it for the very first time. By 6:48 AM it is almost gone from the hallway, as if the shining path of light were never there at all, only the gold of the pendulum one hallway and room away still flashes at me, and even this is beginning to fade.

What chance that I would sit here at exactly the right time to see our grandfather clock paint a golden road down our hallway for a few precious minutes? The effect has nearly vanished now at 6:52, but it was magical while it lasted.

So many artists bemoan that they don’t have a good idea, a different enough idea, but moments of beauty, surprise, wonderment, happen all around us, nearly constantly. Do not bemoan that you have no inspiration, open your senses see what is around you and understand that ordinary does not exist, anymore than extraordinary does. They are intermingled and waiting for the right person to notice them and see how truly special one quiet moment can be.

Kiss the Dead Tour – Seattle

I’m writing this blog about our wonderful event in Seattle while looking out at palm trees and Southern California ocean. Much warmer, sunnier, and just different from the great Pacific Northwest. Both have an ocean, but this is all sand and beach goers, and Seattle is more about the city, and what comes out of the sea, rather than dipping our toes in it. Jon and I love Seattle, but I admit that I’m glad to have sunshine and no rain.
Thanks to everyone that came out last night to the Seattle Town Hall, where University Books sponsored yet another great event for us. Thanks to the whole crew, but especially Duane, and Art, who helped keep us secure, and Michael who risked life and limb to take the pictures. We really thought he was going to back off the stage a time, or two. 🙂 Some of the fans said they’d seen us at least three times, or was that four? I know you guys want the new books as they come out, but I’m amazed that you also want to hear the question and answer session, the show, again and again. I’m glad I can entertain you for two hours at a shot, and keep so many of you coming back.
One question I figured I’d get a lot this tour was when’s the next Merry Gentry novel coming out. Most of you knew it was scheduled for December. Last night I asked, “How many of you follow me on twitter, or FaceBook?” Over half the audience raised their hands. I then asked, “How many of you have noticed that I’m having trouble with this Merry book?” Again, a lot of hands went up. I’ve been listening to a lot of Christmas music which is what I go to when I’m really struggling with a book. Merry has not been happy with this book from the beginning, and neither have I. I wasn’t sure what was wrong at first, but eventually Merry told me, if you stop arguing with your characters and let them talk to you, most of the time they’ll let you know what’s wrong. What’s wrong is that to have a book you have to make your main character’s life unhappy. To make an interesting book you have to have things go wrong, and Merry is truly happy for the first time in her life, or at least since her father died, and she doesn’t want me messing that up. She has her twins, the men she’s in love with, and the men she loves, and it’s all good. I honestly think I should have stopped the series at book seven, Swallowing Darkness, but I was still under contract for more books and I still love the world. I also couldn’t imagine never writing about Merry, Doyle, Frost, Rhys, Galen, . . . heck everybody. But if I had stopped with book seven I could have given her that happy-ever-after-ending, and moved on. But I didn’t, I wrote book eight, Divine Misdemeanors, and even that could have been the end, but I left one huge plot point looming. Queen Andais, Merry’s aunt, has gone completely bug nuts and is basically a serial killer except she’s picking on victims that can’t die. If they could die, she’d be torturing her nobles to death. They are fleeing to Los Angeles and to Merry and her men. Andais won’t tolerate that forever, but more than that Merry can’t leave her people to the ministrations of Andais. If I had not added that last bit of insanity to the queen we could have walked away, but I wrote it and now we’re stuck. Merry can’t leave Andais on the throne, but she fears she will die in a duel and orphan her babies, and lose everything. Merry wants to be left the fuck alone, and I can’t really blame her. So, what to do?
I took a day to clear my head and write something else, because sometimes an idea will block the creative pipe. Fifty pages later I had the beginning of the next Anita Blake novel. It was ready to write and ready to go. Okay. I went back to Merry, because that was what was due next. Again, the writing slowed to a crawl, so I took a day, and thirty-forty pages later I had the beginnings of a brand new book set in a brand new world, with a brand new main character. That book is almost ready to write, I just need a little more time to world build, but the character, the voice, and the opening gambit are written and set. It’s based on a sticky note that I’ve had on my wall of stickies for ten years. I love it when an idea finally lets me know it’s ready. Then I went back to Merry, and the book never picked up. I crawled along at a pace that was never going to make deadline. I finally had to call my agent and my editor and tell them it wasn’t happening. There will be no Merry book in December this year. Sorry, guys but there won’t be. Merry has put her foot down and simply doesn’t want her life screwed up this badly. I have tried everything and anything I can think of, but in the end Merry won’t play ball. I’m leaving her alone, and going to let her and the muse that plays with her sit and think. I think we’ll work it out eventually, but I have no idea when. I know we will though, because I have scenes written when the twins are in kindergarten in L. A. and they are fun scenes. We will get there, but first we have Andais to conquer, seduce, or something. I have some ideas, but they aren’t ready yet. It’s cooking, slowly, and in the mean time . . .
If I had still been at two different publishing houses I’d be in serious trouble, because the other publisher would want the Merry book, but this sort of thing is why I decided one publisher in the U. S. would be a good thing, because now whatever book I write is theirs, so they won’t get a Merry book in December, but they’ll get the next Anita book, though not in December. Sorry, even I don’t write that fast. They’ll get the new book when the time comes, too. Whatever I’m working on is something they get to publish and make money from, so they stay happy, and I have the luxury as a writer of actually writing what speaks to my muse, and wants to be written next, regardless of deadline pressure. This is the first time in twenty years, thirty books that I’ve ever had to miss a deadline completely, and just say, “I can’t.” I hated doing it. Hated saying it, but once I worked through the issues of having to do it, it was a huge relief. I should have called it a couple of months ago, but I’m nothing if not stubborn, and I was just sure I could force my way through it. But writing isn’t like making widgets, it’s not just tab B into slot A, if it was then anyone could do it, and you’d get a Merry book this Yuletide season, but there is an element of mystery to it that even I don’t completely understand. I do know that by forcing myself to stay with this book long after I, my muse, and my main character, were done with it hurt me as a writer, and pissed my muse off. She left me for a bit, my muse. She left me to the harsh mercilessness of the blank screen, and no words. I’d never been so empty, not since I was twelve. It was one of the most horrible feelings. I had been disdainful of people with writer’s block. That it was a failure of confidence and that wasn’t really something I suffered from as a writer, but it’s more than that. The muse, whatever it is exactly, needs a certain amount of care and feeding, and trying to force feed this Merry book down it’s throat damn near made us both choke.
My muse wants to play with Anita, and the new story, and other ideas are coming, but only after I came to my senses and stopped treating my gift, my muse, my inspiration, like an assembly line where you can just put a book together because it’s time to do it. I’ve done it that way for twenty years. I have never, ever abandoned a book in place. Hell, I sold the first book I ever wrote, Nightseer. Most writers have trunks of unsold, and mostly unsalable books, but not me. I write it, I sell it, its what I do, but not this time. This time my muse let me know that I had to cut this shit out, or she was packing her bags and leaving, so . . . I cut this shit out. I listened to that mysterious part of me, and I am learning what feeds my muse, what inspires me, and what starves her, and what harms me as an artist.
Eventually I’m pretty sure you’ll get the next Merry book, but I don’t know when. You will get the next Anita book, because I’m writing it now, and you will get the brand new adventure because it’s alive in my head and I’m making more notes, and there will be other short stories, because my muse and I have reconciled like a feuding couple rediscovering that they love each other, after all.

Avengers, writing, Anne of Green Gables, and The Expendables for Mother’s Day!

Avengers for Mother’s Day!

Avengers totally rocked! An adventure movie where the action rocked, but so did the characterization, the dialogue, the humor and the poignant moments. Favorite bit of dialogue, “Puny, god.”
Loved what they did with Black Widow played by Scarlett Johansson. Her fight scenes were every bit as good as any of the others, and that meant they were amazing. I don’t know if they had a better fight coordinator, or if Ms. Johansson had hit the gym, or they had a better fight double, but whatever they did this Black Widow was everything she should have been and more. It was so much better than her first appearance in Iron Man 2.
Only thing I missed was a gratuitous shot of Chris Hemsworth shirtless. But as Jon pointed out, no one had a gratuitous flesh shot, which was nice, even wonderful, it was all about the story, but still . . . loved that one scene in Thor. *grin*
Just in case someone hasn’t seen it, I’ll avoid spoilers, but there are a lot of great moments in the Avengers. It is definitely one to see on the big screen.
Now watching The Expendables with Jon, Trinity, and Chica, my sister. We saw the previews for The Expendables II and Chica had never seen the first one, so we’re watching the first movie to prep for the second. Besides, it’s Mother’s Day and I love this movie.
Trinity got me the complete Anne of Green Gables movie set for her gift, and was so excited that she’d gotten me exactly what I asked for that she couldn’t wait for me to watch it, so we watched it yesterday.
This morning I woke early my muse loud in my head. I did pages before breakfast letting everyone else sleep in, then the planned breakfast was had for brunch. Chica fixed Cinnamon Apple French Toast, which is a Cooking Light recipe. It’s become one of my new favorite breakfasts.
The idea that I wrote on today wasn’t the Merry book. An idea hit a few days back, that’s actually probably been trying to break through for a few weeks. One sign of that is that the Merry book has been going slower and slower. Usually when I have what I call an interrupting idea, or a pushy idea, I know what idea it is, what characters, some clue, but not this time. So when I uncaged my muse I had no idea what we’d be working on. Why did I interrupt the Merry book, because I’ve learned that if an idea is pushy enough it will actually act like a creative log jam. It can bring all work to a grinding halt. It’s best to give the idea at least a day. The problem comes when the first day of pages is ten, or more, then I know I’m in trouble. That’s how I got the books Micah, and Flirt. One interrupted a Merry book, and the other actually pushed ahead in the cue of a different Anita book. The short piece, “Can he Bake a Cherry Pie,” did that when it was ready to be written, too. I’d had the idea on my sticky wall of ideas for a few years, but when the story was ready to write it jumped ahead in line. Some stories, and books, just demand your attention. Sometimes you can bull through it, but I find that it works best to work with your ideas and your muse, not against them. I now have two chapters and some of a third of a completely different book. We’ll see if it writes as fast as the other three pushy ideas did. I love it when the writing flows like the proverbial water from the cleft rock.
I gave myself a day about a month ago and in one day had thirty pages of a totally different book. I put it away and went back to the Merry book, because the thirty pages took the edge off and cleared the log jam. This idea, not yet. Whatever magic point needs to be written, I haven’t found it yet. I’m beginning to worry that they’re all book ideas. I’ve had two books fighting for first place in line before, and I managed it, but three? I’ve never tried to juggle three before. It would be hard to make progress towards deadlines if my attention was that divided.
I was going to do more pages after the movies, but I’m thinking early bed sounds really good. I think that four hours of sleep last night is catching up with me.
So a lovely Mother’s Day winding to a close here. I hope that all the mothers out there had a great day full of things that made them happy, I know I did.

Happy Imbolc!

It’s Imbolc, the first holiday of the year for those of us who are Wiccan. Today we celebrate the Goddess Brid, Saint Bridget. It was traditionally the beginning of lambing season, and the first growth after the long, cold winter. In some mild parts of Ireland, and the rest of the British Isles early wild greens and other wild eatables were in the fields if you knew where to look. It was a sign of spring, or almost, in that part of the world. Though, often you deliver lambs with snow and ice on the ground, or actually coming down around you. Imbolc is the promise of life’s return, not exactly spring, but a measure of hope that spring, and summer, will come, and winter does not last forever. As part of my Imbolc celebration today I’ve tried my hand at writing a prayer to Brid. I’m sharing it below. If it inspires anyone, great, but if it does nothing but let you share in some of my beliefs, than that’s great, too. Happy Imbolc everyone! Blessed be.

Dear Goddess Brid, Saint Bridget, be with me now as I put my foot on my path and seek to create reality out of thin air. Guide my hand as I craft this work of imagination made solid, and real enough to share with others. Help me find the inspiration of your forge burning in the night and in the day for your light never goes out, the gentle fierceness of your hand as it heals, and rocks the cradle of all of our endeavors, for fertility is not just about flesh and blood, but about taking that spark of heat, the idea, forging it into something solid, because ideas can be as real as a sword, or a ring. Let me be wise in my creation, let me be fierce in it’s defense, let me be true to my message and my vision.

So mote it be.

Riding down your Muse

People talk about the Muse as if it’s always beautiful Greek ladies dressed in flowing togas, or nude, dancing in a sunlit meadow, with flower garlands in their hands. If my Muse is there she’s sitting under a tree watching the other’s with a jaded eye and a cup of very strong, hot, caffeine in her delicate, but calloused hand.

My visual lately for my Muse has a knight on horseback. The horse has wings like Pegasus, and both it, and the knight are in shining silver armor that flashes in the sun, as they ride/fly charging across the sky/ground. The knight is armed with sword and shield, and other instruments of destruction, and he rides through the sunlit meadow, scattering the dancing women. They run screaming the flowers trampled underfoot, and he scoops up one of the fleeing women, puts her in front of his saddle and rides off with her. She’s crying, screaming for help. But the muse under the tree walks out into his path, one hand out, cup of coffee still in her hand, bored look on her face. The horse rears, knight fighting to keep it from trampling her, she never flinches, sips her coffee, doesn’t spill a drop. Knight sits there looking down at her; she looks up at him, a tiny wry smile quirks one side of her mouth. He raises the visor on his helmet so you can see his face. He’s smiling. She shakes her head, and taps one finger in the air towards the ground, and takes another sip of coffee. Knight slides the crying woman down to the ground. She stumbles away to join the other women cowering in the trees.

The knight and the woman look at each other. He holds his hand out to her. She gives him a narrow look, finishes her coffee, sits it on the ground to one side, and takes his hand. He swings her up behind him on the horse, the wings flaring between them, around them, as she wraps her arms around his armored waist, and he lays a gauntleted hand over her arms, as if assuring himself she’s really there. Because sometimes the muse is out dancing in the meadow and the writing just dances out of your fingers and onto the page, and sometimes you have ride your muse/mind/imagination down with a sword and force the issue. But the best moments are when your muse/mind/imagination and your will join forces. When inspiration and will are one, nothing and no one can stop you, so let the other writers dance in the meadow, and take whatever muse comes easy to their hand, but for me, I want the one in the corner who fights back because she has something to say. Art is always a battle; it’s just a question of whose side you’re on, and how hard you’re willing to fight for it.

Playing as hard, as I Work

I walked into my office this morning with night still thick and black outside my windows. As I got up yesterday to make sure I hit the treadmill, so today I got up early to make up for the fact that I didn’t do a second work session last night. I chose to spend time with Jon and our daughter, Trinity. The three of us often sit in the family room puttering on lap tops, or iPads, or reading. Yesterday I was reading Death in the Long Grass by Chapstick, and a particularly good part made me read a bit out loud. Then somehow, at mostly Trinity’s request, I ended up reading almost a chapter out loud, because once the action starts it doesn’t really stop, and in between jaw-dropping real life adventure, he’s funny. Who doesn’t love humor mixed in with your blood and near death escapes; certainly not me? Then Chica was home, and she was fixing dinner, and I hadn’t seen her all day except as a hi, bye, in the morning before she went to work. I wanted to talk to my sister, and then . . . Well, you see how it went. I love my family, and love spending time with them. So, when I woke in blackness, knowing just by the quality of it, that dawn was not that close I got out of bed to go work. I played last night, so I could look at this as my penance, or I could say it’s a trade. I didn’t regret anything but the television watching last night. Even one show is too much with my schedule right now. But, a lot of my schedule is fun!
I used to think my life would get less busy someday, but Jon took me aside about seven years into our marriage, and said, “You keep saying it’s going to get less busy, but it doesn’t. It’s been like this since we got together.” He touched my shoulders, turned me to look up into his eyes and very seriously said, “I think this is it. This is your schedule, and it doesn’t get any easier.” My husband is a very wise man sometimes.
A few years back I was more successful than I’d ever dreamed of being as a writer, but I was pretty miserable, because all I was doing was writing. One memorable day I finished an Anita Blake novel in the morning, sent it off to New York, and began the next Meredith Gentry book that afternoon. Even I, with the stamina of a bull Elk, *laughs* could not keep that kind of schedule going forever. One thing I did was consolidate both series at one publisher. Now, no matter which series I’m working on, I’m making my publisher, Penguin Putnam happy, before this it was like dating two men who knew about each other, so you weren’t cheating, but they both wanted all your time. Eventually if you burn the candle at both ends you meet in the middle, and poof, no more candle. I needed a better way to burn, one that didn’t use me up.
So, what did I do? Well, I took one year where I did just one book, not two. That’s why there wasn’t a Merry book this year, but I’ve said, a lot, that there will be a Merry book in 2012, but it does mean I’m back to having to write two books in a very short space of time. I know, I know, every writer should have it so hard that they have two New York Times best selling series, and that they hit #1 a lot, so much so that their publisher wants more! It’s a great “problem” to have, but try my writing schedule for a little bit, then come talk to me about what is, and isn’t, a problem. I’ll manage it, but one thing I couldn’t bear to do was to go back to the punishing schedule I’d been on for the last few years. So, what to do?
I decided to play as hard as I work. Which means, I read to my daughter yesterday when she asked, as she remarked on things she was doing on the internet, and as Jon shared some of his findings on the inter web. It means I talked to Chica for a bit. It means this weekend Jon and I are going to visit friends out of state. Yes, the deadline is looming, but there’s always a deadline looming, and that’s just the way of things, as Jon said, “This is it. I don’t think it’s going to get any easier.” Since I couldn’t take away from my work schedule, I added things that were fun to my schedule. It seems counter intuitive to add to an already impossible schedule, but it was either add, or subtract and that would mean you guys would get fewer books with more time in between them, besides when I don’t write for awhile I get a little odd. My muse and I are heavy use items, and it works for us. 🙂
I have traveled more for pleasure this year than I have in the previous five, or longer. I had cut all the joy out of my life and whittled it down to the work, in a vain attempt to keep it all going, but you can only whittle away so much before you begin to cut into things that you need. By adding my more playtime to my insane schedule I have been happiest I have ever been. My muse and I have gone from feeling dry and empty, to a full well of ideas and inspiration. Writing isn’t just about putting my butt in a chair and making pages. It’s also about finding what inspires me. Not just ideas, I’m one of those blessed writers who finds ideas every damn where, but that breath of the divine that fills my metaphorical sails and helps me keep going until I’ve reached the shore. Before I figured out what I needed I was like a ship in the middle of a calm sea, out of fuel for my engine, and with no wind, I was left trying to paddle a very big ship. Ships aren’t meant to run on paddle power alone; no wonder I was tired. *grin*
Today I woke anxious, convinced I’d wasted last night, and how dare I do that with a book needing to be written, comic stuff due, and the deadline for the book coming at me like a train barreling down the tracks. How dare I waste my time, and not WORK! But I got up in the dark so I could start work early, because I didn’t burn the candle last night, I got up to burn it this morning. It’s the compromise, and I have no regrets about where I spent my time yesterday. I mean, what do I regret? Reading to my child? Um, no. Talking to my sister? No. Spending some serious quality time with my husband? Nope, no regrets. I walked into my office in the darkness and was happy to be there before dawn, happy to be getting to work, and not wanting to trade anything from last night, except the television watching. No more of that for awhile, I’m afraid. There will come a time when the deadline eats the world and I won’t be able to choose to talk, or visit, or read aloud to my family, but that’s a couple of months away. Until then, I’m going to enjoy my family, my home, my life, and the friends and people that help renew and inspire me. I can be successful beyond my wildest dreams, and still enjoy my life. It just takes planning, time management, and a lot of play dates for me, not the child. *laughs*