Well, I cleaned off my desk today, and let me tell you something. It always takes a really long time. I also did laundry, and that takes a long time, too! Which makes my eyes all squinty, the laundry and the cleaning.
I also edited a Spice Brief called The Experiment and sent that off to my editor; so that’s what I do instead of watching The Super Bowl. I work. Oh, I did play some Sims 3 earlier today, but I don’t really count it since I was actually editing while I just let my Sim lady go about her business.
She discovered a star.
I know, right? Who knew they even could? Left to her business, she will play her guitar a lot and flirt with people. She also apparently likes to discover stars. And she found some seeds, but I don’t think she’ll plant them. Well, maybe she will, I don’t know.
Tomorrow I aim to get up at a good time (instead of letting the alarm just go off, then again, then again later…) which means I intend to get to bed very shortly. Which is also what I’m doing instead of watching the Super Bowl. Going to be early. I believe I shall read. Now, I just finished Under the Dome which was a doorstop of a book, my God, over 1000 pages, really? REALLY?! And I think I’m going to read The Lightning Thief or possibly The Dead and Gone next. Because I feel like it.
On the other hand, if I’m going to dive back into Collide tomorrow, I really should read through it to refresh my memory. So maybe I’ll take that to bed with me instead, and go over it.
See, that’s what I do instead of watching football.
So, my friend Jen recently introduced me to this song:
buy from itunes here:
iTunes tells me I’ve listened to it 110 times (not counting when I listened in my car or the 10 times I listened on my iPod this morning while I took notes for Collide.)
This song is everything that anyone ever felt about love and yearning and loss. It is not, thank the heavens above, about my life. It’s not even about anything that ever happened in my life (at least not on the receiving side of things, I’m sorta kinda sure I’ve loved someone I never wanted to see again, so I guess I could’ve been loved but never wanted to be seen again…)
Anyway, my point is, sometimes music so transports me it colors everything I do and feel and write and think. And I love music for that reason. I love writing for that reason. I love sitting in a bustling coffee shop with my headphones on, and the music plays and I am transported, and the words come out.
I am the creator and destroyer of worlds.
When I was writing Broken, I sat in a coffee shop on the main street of the town in which I grew up. The coffee shop had once been a laundromat, I think, and a place that sold used video games; when it became a coffee shop I was overjoyed because it was close to where my spawn was going to preschool and that meant I could drop him off and head over there for a glorious two hours or so twice a week, and write.
I wrote sitting at the same table in the front of the store. I could look out into the street, watch the people pass. I’d drink coffee (I never drank coffee until I started writing in coffee shops) and I’d eat a plain bagel smeared with some strawberry jelly, because I was trying to lose weight and I didn’t want butter or cream cheese.
I’d finished a book I called Dirty, and I had several others I was working on, but I thought it might make sense to write another erotic novel. I’d had the idea for months and months, and I didn’t think I could write it. Broken, that is, which I was calling something else at the time. Cheater, I think, and eventually, Precious and Fragile Things — the title from a song by Depeche Mode called Precious.
I sat in the same seat at the same table in front of the window, and I put my headphones on — my iPod was new and white and like a brick; I didn’t think I’d ever fill it with music and as it turned out, I never did because it broke before I could.
I sat in that seat with my Alphasmart, not the Neo, the first one. And my iPod. And my music.
The song was What If You by Joshua Radin.
I sat in my chair, at my table, in front of my window, and I had that song on repeat as I wrote, and I cried, not caring if people stared (they might’ve, I didn’t notice) and I made words come from my head and into a document. I made a story. I took the words and I made them into something more than letters strung together with punctuation. I made them into a world.
I didn’t know if I would ever sell that book. I didn’t know if I’d sell Dirty. I didn’t know if I would ever reach the next step in my writing, and though I was grateful for where I was, I was not fulfilled. I wanted more. I didn’t know, sitting there with that song playing over and over and over again that what I was doing would work, or that it would someday become a book I could hold in my hands and which people have read and wept over just as I wept when I wrote it.
Today and yesterday and tomorrow, Unkle Bob’s Swan is that song for me now. It’s not even that it has so much to do with the book I’m writing, and it’s not about my life; it’s about the feeling that song gives me and what it makes me want to do and what it makes me want to create.
I am not uncomplicated. I am not easy. Who ever is?
I don’t sit in that coffee shop any more. It closed. And I don’t wonder if Collide will sell, because it already has. But I still sit with headphones in my ears as the soundtrack of my life plays over me as I push my cart down the grocery aisle, or as I type, or as I scribble notes in a black notebook that has the remnants of a dozen novels already inside it — as the music plays inside my head and I am transported, I think I should be walking in slow motion, my hair blowing, maybe with the ocean pushing itself onto the sand behind me and someone waiting there to take my hand.
So, what am I going to do on my glorious, glorious first day alone after what seemed like an endless holiday? I’m going to work on Collide, that’s for damn sure. And I think I shall clean off my desk, not because I want to clean anything but because I have to, if I want to see my keyboard.
And then I’m gonna write me some woe. Oh, yes, woe. Because the heroine has been soundly rejected by the hero and she’s one pissed off woman. He’s gonna get a smack down of epic proportions, that foron. He’s gonna get soundly spanked…and guess what?
HE WILL F-ING LOVE IT.
I do not know why I sometimes fake like I don’t curse by adding a “dash” in the middle of the f-word, when really, we all know I let that word fly around all the time. I shouldn’t act like I’m classy, that’s dishonest.
In other news, there are some people in this world who are simply so douchetastic it seems unbelievable that they could become any more ridiculously foronic, but guess what? THEY CAN! I know, right? Seems like that shouldn’t be so, but it really just is. And I’m not talking about the forons who keep putting my work up on illegal download sites (sorry if you don’t like to hear me complain about that, but the fact is, until they stop doing it, I’m not going to stop getting all Christian Bale about it) — I’m talking about the type of forons who act like the world is not just their oyster, but their entire f-ing pearl necklace.
And here’s what it looks like when the UPS person leaves my boxes of books out in the rain and I must save them, saaaaaaaave them!!!!!
And this is the disaster zone of my office:
And here is the disaster zone of my desk:
So. Yeah. Down to 18 minutes and counting. I’ma get my spawn into his shoes and coat and out the door, I’ma get my coffee brewing, I’ma get some sh** picked up off my floor and get to work!
I just like saying that. So, got a cold. Went to bed last night at about 7 pm. Problem with that is, by the time I feel asleep, I’d slept for two hours and then woke up and it was only 10:43 pm and I couldn’t fall back to sleep, thus meaning I stayed awake until about 1 am and consequently, now I am tired.
And I still have a cold.
Superman gave me acupuncture for my sinuses and the spot still hurts, which is unusual! He’s generally so gentle with the needles…
And, as it happens, I got to a great point in COLLIDE yesterday (despite having company in the form of one spawn) just as everyone returned home and it was time for dinner and whatnot, and I did brainstorm whilst laying abed, NOT sleeping, I fear I’ve forgotten what I brainstormed, and of course, today I have to do errands since the spawn is still home and there are parental-ish things that must be accomplished.
But I dreamed Vince Vaughn took me to a New York City diner and we had eggs while talking about iPhones.
Now I’m off! I hope to have some time to write today/tonight but it’s not looking good, and I’m annoyed, because I really want to write. Which is good. And bad. Because I can’t until much later, and by then I’ll probably feel like I have to go to bed.
Wow, holiday schedules are a beyotch. Kids off from school, travelling, cooking, not writing…I’m all discombobulated and I still have a kid at home today. And tomorrow. OY.
So, before I go take a shower and get started on the day, here is a blog post to get me situated back in the reality of WORK and not PLAY.
SWITCH is up for pre-order and wow, look at that price!
NEWLY FALLEN — available now!
Get 25% off DEEPER!
For audiolovers — — Woooo! Reason Enough, Layover and This Is What I Want on Audio! If you like that sort of thing. Sorry I can’t get a pretty linky type thing with a graphic and whatnot, but iTunes won’t let me.
And thanks to everyone who helped make THIS possible!
Writing, writing, writing on Collide. Got a little stuck, but now I’m moving forward again. Of course have to cut off early today for family duties. *shakes fist*
Oh, and hungry. So, so hungry. *shakes fist*
You wanna see how real life and fiction collide? (haha, get it?)
lines of the day: I looked again, closer. Long black coat. Long striped scarf. My stomach flip-flopped. I reached for the picture, the glass dusty and spotted, the wooden frame loose at the corners.
That was my house. This one. Tall and narrow, three windows on one side of the front door, one on the other. Okay, so it could’ve been any house, but it looked like mine.
And then, I saw the TARDIS. I’d missed it the first time, the blue shape partially obscured by the out-of-perspective trees. Oh.
“Hello, Doctor.” I touched the figure again. Mystery revealed. I’d been a huge Doctor Who freak as a kid. No disrespect to any who came after him, but Tom Baker would always be my doctor.
I was dead this morning when I woke up. Dead tired, that is. But now it’s nearly midnight, I’m getting up in four hours for the meteor shower, I know that my real getting up time won’t be much later after that, and I know I’ll be a zombie again in the morning. But right now with the house quiet all around me, with my fingers flying over the keys, with the story coming out of me…
I wish I could write all night and sleep in tomorrow. THAT is what I would do if I didn’t have people living in my house who needed stuff from me.
But let me say this: It’s been awhile since a book gave me such utter uncomplicated joy. I’m not saying COLLIDE will be my best book (the best ones seem to actually be the hardest to write, though Tempted is my personal all time favorite and it came out pretty fast by necessity.) And don’t get me wrong, I love all my stories, or else I wouldn’t write them –contrary to what some people seem to to think about authors, I don’t personally know any who write books they hate on purpose!
But this one is…special.
Today’s page count: 23
more lines of the day: Johnny’s coat brushed our table as he passed, and I let my fingers creep over the spot to caress it. I caught Jen looking at me. I shrugged.
“You,” she said, “have it worse than I ever did.”
Still hoping to hit my 20 pages today. Five more to go, and it’s bed time. But I’ll try, because I love this story, and I work better at night. I just do.
Lines of the day:
Johnny shrugged. “Coupla hours? I gotta tell you, Em, I figured you’d disappeared again, just run off. But you left your stuff behind. How’d you do that?”
He looked me over, a frown tipping his mouth for the first time since he’d seen me. “What are you wearing?”
I had on a pair of fuzzy sleep pants with Batman on them and a baby doll t-shirt. Sick-day clothes. I’d showered but done nothing with my hair, and it hung in still-damp sheaves, heavy down my back.
“Kiss me,” I said instead of answering him. “Just kiss me.”
And he did. Long, and soft and slow and sweet, just the way I wanted it and the way I needed it. The way I knew he would kiss me in my real life, if only I could ever convince him to try. I pulled away, knowing I must look tousled and glazed. Love drunk.
Mmmmm, Johnny. Wow. Am I ever loving him. I think I might change his name, though.
Helllloooooo! Surfacing. Today was a good writing day. Of course, tomorrow I won’t be home and the next two days after that my spawn doesn’t have school and then it’s the weekend. Really, universe, why must you conspire against me?
If I lived alone and could wallow in filth and eat out of cans, I’d get ever so much more writing done.
Anyway, I’m working on COLLIDE and I am loving this book. LOOOOOOVING. Which means writing it feels like fun, not work. Hooray!
Section of the day: (do I really need to warn you there’s a smidgen of adult content? really?)
I put my hands on my hips. “Yeah. I mean, I know it must be a pain in the ass to have people bugging you when you’re just trying to have a cup of coffee and a muffin.”
“Yeah. That can be a real pain in the ass,” Johnny said slowly.
I narrowed my eyes, wishing I could read his expression. “But you know what?”
“What,” Johnny said, and damned if he didn’t sound amused.
“I don’t think it’s because you’re shy or because too many people bug you, because let’s face it, most people don’t even know who you are any more. Or they don’t give a damn.”
His shoulders lifted and fell at that, a laugh or a shrug, with his face in shadow I couldn’t tell. “What about you?”
“I know who you are,” I told him.
“Yeah,” Johnny said. “But do you give a damn?”
I turned at that, my fists clenched. Then I turned back and forced myself to say, “Yes. I do.”
“Why?”
I didn’t know why. It was more than the ass, the face, the long-past fame. It wasn’t his art. It wasn’t his house, his money. It wasn’t even his coat or that long scarf I loved.
It was the heat of summer, and it was the taste of him I knew I couldn’t know. It was the feeling of his hair in my fingers and his cock up deep inside me, and it was the sound of his voice saying my name when he came.
It was the smell of oranges.
I’m up over 100 pages now, and I dunno about any of you writers out there, but 100 pages starts to feel like a real book. It’s about a quarter finished. We should know the characters. We should get a feeling for what’s going on. We’re half way to the halfway point, halfway to the place where everything has to start moving down hill. 100 pages feels like an accomplishment, like I’m making progress.
And, of course, like I said…the rest of this week is shot, the weekend is shot, then next week…thank God Thanksgiving isn’t next week, that’s all I gotta say. I can get this book finished before the end of the year, and won’t that just be fine? It will. It really will.
I’m still holding onto Three Months (working title, not sure what it’ll be called) because even though it’s finished, I feel as though I should look over it again once more after having let it rest. Normally I like to just get things off my desk, but I have time before the deadline. I’m going to look at it again.
There is always the danger of too much tinkering. You do need to know when to let it go. And I don’t think I have much tinkering to do. I just want to read it again, make sure it is what I want it to be.
So I’ll keep working away on COLLIDE (I do believe I might have some good time alone here this evening with everyone out and about, and instead of fertoodling around I guess I should get some extra work done for the times when I can’t.)
But now…I think there’s a dishwasher calling my name. Oh, it’s a saucy bastard, that dishwasher. It thinks just because it saves me from having to wash dishes by hand that I should be grateful to it, but FIE, I say. FIE!
Phew. Got my 20 pages done and guess what I LIKE THEM. WHEEEEEEE!
Favorite line of the day: “If I were famous for dangling my dingle I might not want anyone to notice me, either.”
Also, Beth Keryis giving away a copy of Deeper! Head on over to her blog to check that out. Thanks, Beth!
Hmm, what else? Well, if you look over in the sidebar, I’ve started to do some fun stuff on eHow.com and Squidoo. Why? Why not? I like writing articles and talking about stuff I like. I like reading about stuff other people like. If you head over and check out some of my articles, and you like what you see, please feel free to rate them. I’m told the better the articles are rated or the more people who recommend them, the higher they show up on searches or something like that. Which means, I guess, more people would read them?
Something else that’s just for fun: I put up a short story collection on Amazon.com for the Kindle. It’s called Skewed Universe, and really, these stories are NOT for the squeamish. They’re a little horror, a little romance (but dark romance, not happy), a little paranormal, a little just…well, if you like strange, skewed stuff, you might like to check it out. It’s only a dollar!
I didn’t get my nap and now it’s too late. I’m off to edit a Spice Brief and percolate tomorrow’s 20 pages on COLLIDE.
I write to music. Always. Hear what I'm listening to right this very minute as I write. You can listen to what I was listening to when I wrote certain books and stories. And, if you like a song, please purchase it from your favorite retailer so you can support the artist -- because downloading music without paying for it is as douchey as pirating ebooks!
