Bloodletting

Most writers know this famous quote:

There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.
~Walter Wellesley "Red" Smith

I love it, because that pretty much sums up the process for me.

The funny thing is, some books are deeply personal. The Roofer was one of those that drained a few veins. Invisible Girl was another. And some, it may seem, on the surface of things, to be less of a phlebotomy exercise. Spanish Disco was funny. I felt like I was writing a stand-up routine. But that doesn't mean it didn't make me bleed. In fact, some of what I was saying--or trying to say--about grief and loss have become even more meaningful over the last few months.

There is simply, I don't think, a way to write that doesn't involve bloodletting, intense emotions, a difficult process punctuated by moments of sheer joy.

Anyone else feel like opening a vein is an apt description for what we do?

Overthinking, Overwriting, Overplotting

When I write, I tend to write from the gut. I have a "big picture" idea of my plot, almost like a movie. I have the story arc. I have the main characters--and I know their back story fairly well, know their emotionality. I start at the first word. I keep writing until I get to the end. What happens in between sometimes stumps me, but in the end I write through it. That's my process.

No outline. No character sketches. I write more freely and emotionally this way.

I have friends who write detailed outlines and detailed character sketches. I have friends who use index cards, friends who use flowcharts, friends who use Post-its and storyboards, friends who use all sorts of props.

That's all good. Whatever works.

Except . . . .

I do think sometimes writers can get so involved with trying to be clever, that they lose their emotionality. They can have such complex methods for creating, that they drown their book in details.

The clue?

If in all this plotting and all this writing, and all this thinking . . . the writer loses the elevator pitch. If a book cannot be reduced to a core 25-word punch . . . to something real and emotional and basic.

I've seen it happen. If YOU cannot even BEGIN to detail your book without a fifteen-minute backstory explanation, guess what? Your agent won't be able to pitch it.

I worked with a writer years ago whose plot was so convoluted. The first thing I did as his writing coach was tell him to drop fifteen different devices he was adding. His hero didn't HAVE to have so many weird burdens and back story elements. Reduce it all to an emotional core--keep the plot except we don't need three different villains and four different people on the police force blocking his way, oh . . . and the hero's sister doesn't need to have leukemia at the SAME TIME that his child is missing and his identity is stolen and . . . and . . . and his father is going through a divorce . . . and his wife is threatening to leave and . . . you get the idea.

You can overthink your book.

Thoughts?

Words

I know for some people, music with words is a no-no when they write. I love classical music, and I do write to it. Also jazz. But I have, of late, discovered words in my music are just fine while writing. This is because I recognize the poetry in the lyrics. The Arcade Fire . . . I love this band, and their lyrics are amazingly simple, but their music so complex. They, right now, fill me with AWE. Fat Boy Slim--I love the way they merge music and lyrics with their beats. John Hiatt--the man is a poet.

As a writer, I am inspired that words can be used to create something so utterly lovely and perfect. Something that soothes your soul or makes you FEEL. Something that wakes you up when you are tired, or can move you to have a good cry.

I've always known the power of words. When I get a letter from a breast cancer survivor's husband about Do They Wear High Heels in Heaven, or from someone who has been touched by a book, then I can't help but be aware.

The power of words has helped me advocate for my kids in the school system to make sure they get in the classes they need. Or to make sure that an unacceptable situation in school stops. People get my letters and realize, "This sounds VERY lawyer-like, we had better pay attention before she really brings out the legal guns." I am not rude--just insistent and articulate. If that makes me sound like a lawyer, fine.

And all of this reminds me of how words can wound. As I watch yet again someone like the Evil Woman I Shall Not Name Who Surely Is Going to Hell, who said, on national TV, that she wished John Edwards--a man who has had a son die, whose wife has uncurable cancer, who has two young children and an older daughter--had been killed in a terrorist act, I am stunned. What is wrong with people?

I will, as a writer, defend a person's right to say whatever they want. I do. All the time. Even the ugliest of crap like the evil woman's chronic dialogue of hate. But I appreciate Buddhism, which says SPEAK LESS. And I appreciate, especially, what I do for a living. I know the power of words. I respect them. I love listening to words crafted around lyrics. I love writing loving notes to people I care about. I love that I can express joy and beauty and wit and sadness with the words that pop into my head.

I understand the power of words.

Thoughts?

It Gets Better!

I brought two chapters of my work in progress to my writers' group last night--and they really liked it. I was so fired up from their comments, I wrote almost another whole chapter last night.

Yes, as a writer, it doesn't get much better than that--both feeling so excited that it flows, and the group liking it.

We work so hard, laboring in solitude, that external validation is very nice sometimes. But I thought I would share the above because maybe people find it weird that a writer with nearly twenty books published--on shelves of bookstores! (let me tell you, that feels weird sometimes)--and who has had some major magazine coverage or blurbs--like Cosmopolitan and US Weekly--would be most validated by two people who read a work in progress that hasn't sold and hasn't even been SHOWN to her agent. But that's the truth. Honest to God.

You know, I remember when I got in Cosmopolitan. I happened to be in NYC. I was standing in Duane Reade, buying other crap when someone--I think my editor--called to tell me I got in. So I bought Cosmo, too. I stood on line and it all felt surreal. Then I turned to the page where they said Spanish Disco was "hilarious." It still felt surreal.

I get fan email every week. I love hearing from people, but they are strangers . . . and in a way, that's validating--I touched them somehow--but that ALSO feels surreal.

And in the end, maybe it's me, or the group dynamic, but knowing my group likes it just resonates inside.

So . . . does anything about writing give you external validation?

Welcome to My Playground

Okay, so it's really a picture of Central Park.

But I think of Central Park as a playground. As a native New Yorker, nothing makes me happier than visiting home. And no, I am not in New York right now, but I feel like I am.

Why? Because I am working on something entirely new and HAVING FUN. After the last few months and ongoing health issues of two of my kids, a friend with cancer, having to outlay over $10,000 for a new violin for my daughter, and just the stress of life with four kids and lots of bills and braces and . . . you get the idea . . . writing wasn't fun. Nothing was. I was writing, but something was broken. Inside.

So I started something new. It's a dark book, but there are beautiful parts, too. And best of all, I literally race to the computer to work on it. I haven't showed it to my agent. I will, but for now . . . it's for ME. And I love that. It reminds me why I write. It reminds me, more than anything, that a writer is something you ARE not something you DO.

It reminds me of my unbridled joy when I see Central Park, or I walk the streets of my city.

Welcome to my playground. Anyone else's work in progress a playground? What IS your playground?

Unsaid

I just read a chapter of a manuscript of an aspiring writer looking for editorial help that was passed along to me. There was so much wrong, that I would consider it criminal to accept money to help this person. But one of many things that stood out was that nothing was left unsaid.

Think about real life. People tell you things--and very often they have an agenda. It may not be a nefarious agenda, but whether we realize it or not, most of us try to present the best of public faces. We don't reveal our vulnerabilities until after we've known someone a while. And think about that--when someone DOES reveal every intimate detail about their life, like on a first date, we usually find it odd.

So while everyone presents their best face forward, it is up to us to discern. Can I trust this person? Is this really someone I want to work with? Spend time with? Date? We look at what people say. And we look at what is unsaid. Their body language. The things they seem to leave out of a story. Twice in the last six months, I have been waiting for an appointment with an editor or a friend in a hotel bar, and have been very obviously hit on by slimy men wearing wedding rings who say everything about themselves but the obvious.

What is left unsaid.

And in fiction, good fiction, you look for that nuance, too. You don't want pages of information dumping and back story. You also don't want everyone in every scene to TELL you exactly what they are feeling and thinking about every little thing like some overgrown therapy session. Because in real life, we aren't that way. As a writer, part of the craft is creating a "real" fictional world. And so your characters should leave things unsaid but show us those unsaid things in other ways.

Thoughts? What is left unsaid in your work in progress? In life?

Gollum

There is an incredible lesson to be learned, I think, from the character of Gollum/Smeagol, created by J.R.R. Tolkien.

He, at first, seems hopelessly vile and evil . . . but then, he has a truly pathetic, tragic, deeply sad back story. So much as you hate him and mistrust him, there is a part of you that feels compassion. You feel torn.

I think any author or moviemaker that plays that gray middle--neither black nor white, but some middle ground where the morality is far more complex and muddled, has created something deeper, more reflective of the real world. To be able to play on emotions like that takes skill. But real life is so much like that. Someone you love profoundly wounds you, and much as the simpler path might be to cut them from your life completely, that is the path for cowards--sometimes. The more complicated path, the one that DEMANDS more of you as a human being, often is the one in which you feel for their mistake and try to save them, or try to forgive and move on. Or make yourself vulnerable again because of unconditional love.

In my current work in progress, one of the main characters has done the most awful thing I think a human being can do. She has murdered. But . . . there is a complicated, and I hope Gollum-esque journey, that brought her to the precise and broken place where the choice she made seemed sane to her. Thought afterward, like Gollum, she became a pathetic version of her former self.

Anyway, that's what I am hoping for. And Gollum is the example I am keeping in mind, though my book is not fantasy at all.

Thoughts?

Books of the Heart

You'll hear a lot of authors tell you to write the book of your heart. Well, what the hell does that mean?

For me, a "book of the heart" is one you feel like you have to write, regardless of what's hot in the market. It's the book that won't shut up inside your head. The one whose characters feel so intertwined with you that you need therapy. ;-) (Please . . . if I ever went to a therapist, I think he or she would run shrieking from the room.)

I've written 20 books, give or take. I have genuinely liked all of them. But some were books I wrote to fulfill two- or three-book contracts, in a specific genre, and I may have liked them--REALLY liked them--while writing them, but in some sense, they weren't organic. That is, I knew I had to write another romantic suspense and so . . . plot, characters, book, voila. Others--my heart books--were these books that, even when it was horribly inconvenient, they demanded they be written. The Roofer is one of those. Spanish Disco was another. In both cases, I abandoned other manuscripts entirely to work on them.

A book of your heart does NOT, though, mean they are easier to write. For me, I often wrestle with tougher themes, or with darker material . . . or I am just exhausted by the pace with which the book is pouring out of me.

Here's another thing about books of the heart. You write them often without really thinking they might sell. You write them because you have to. For the last ten months, no one in New York has been looking at chick lit. Even though I still have another RDI to come out next year, the market itself got so glutted, so belittled by the media and even writers themselves, that you couldn't sell a comedy to save your life. BUT . . . I had a very funny proposal--I'd written about 50+ pages of a book that I thought was hysterical. In fact, when I re-read it, I still laugh out loud. My agent sent it to two houses, and one editor said, "Very funny, but we aren't buying ANY chick lit. It's done. Over. The end." But this book was a book I really wanted to write. So you know, I just thought, so what? It's NOT chick lit, it's a comedy, but you can't sell comedy--but sooner or later, people will want to laugh again. And guess what? All of a sudden, there's new interest. It may sell. It may not. But that's besides the point. EVENTUALLY it will sell, and in the meantime, I laugh as I type.

So write the book of your heart. At least for me, this is what I mean when I say that.

Thoughts?

Writing with Spiderman

I am writing this blog post sort of one-handed. No, I didn't break an arm, but I have a squirmy two-year-old in Spiderman pjs on my lap. He is babbling on about "Loola"--the dog next door (whose actual name is Lily, but don't tell Baby #4 that).

And I write anyway.

A long time ago--about four kids ago--I gave up the myth that I needed certain things in order to be able to create. Quiet. Long stretches of solitude. Coffee (gave it up for geen tea). My desk in a certain order. My lucky bathrobe. Candles burning. Two hands.

Believe me, I sometimes fantasize--not about my not-so-secret infatuation, Anthony Bourdain, but about a quiet retreat, a mountain cabin or a beach cottage, all by myself, where I can write.

But I realized, a long time ago, that writers simply write. The ones who produce write when they are sick, when they are inspired, when they are not inspired. When they have only one hand and Spiderman on their lap.

So how about you? What illusion about what you need have you given up--and write anyway?

Peace,

E

Back Story Junkies

Whenever I meet a new couple, I always ask "How did you two meet?" I love all of fate's twists and turns and there is never a couple that doesn't have a great back story to their real-life romance. My significant other and I met when he was a chef and I was waiting tables, and his sous chef burned my best customer's steak, and I hurled the steak through the window and cursed the kitchen with a few choice words, and broke a plate . . . and I guess that suffices for a sort of cute "how we met" tale. For him, it was love at first sight. In my defense, this was BEFORE I studied Eastern philosophy, Buddhism, and found my more peaceful path. Back then, I was a b*tch on wheels.

But I digress . . . I am, most definitely, a back story junkie. I LOVE the "how we met" tales. I LOVE looking at old photo albums--even of people I have NEVER met. I will sit in a near-stranger's home and look through photos and listen to tales. I don't know why, but it's all somehow amazing to me how different people are, their clans, their love stories, their lives.

Which leads me to my new work-in-progress. It has, without a doubt, the most complicated back story of any book I've attempted. The relationship between my heroine and her mother, and the themes of feminism and obsession, are complicated. And here I am in chapter two, struggling . . . because I really just want to sit down and tell you the whole back story in linear fashion, but I know . . . that I can't. It doesn't make for good story-telling, so the secrets have to spill out bit by bit. This entails fighting my natural human instinct.

Anyone else a back story junkie?

Motivation

What gets you up at an ungodly hour, makes you sit in a chair, and pursue a career as a writer? Or, makes you put a pot of coffee on and type away long after your family has gone to bed? What makes you carry around a notebook and scribble furiously when you get an idea?

Motivation. Your reason for being a writer. For me, it's a desire to have this gig, where I sit in my pjs and make stuff up out of my imagination. It feeds my soul. And I get to be home full-time with the kidlets.

But motivation is also, I think, the key--THE key--to characters. Motivate your character with real reasons--a motivation your readers can believe is true--and your readers can suspend disbelief.

Why would my heroine go into a house where she is CERTAIN a serial killer awaits her? My instinct--your instinct--would be to run the other way. Call the cops. But my heroine knows her father is inside, defenseless and unknowing, and so she rushes in with her detective/friend, regardless of what lays in wait.

That motivation, to me, is real. I would die for any of my children. No questions asked. I hope to never be put in that position, but the fierce attachment is there.

We are motivated to write. Why? Your characters are motivated to take risks. Why? Know thyself. Know thy characters . . . and it's all believable.

Thoughts?

Mark Twain Said It Best

Another great quote:

There are some books that refuse to be written. They stand their ground year after year and will not be persuaded. It isn't because the book is not there and worth being written -- it is only because the right form of the story does not present itself. There is only one right form for a story and if you fail to find that form the story will not tell itself.

I don't know about you all, but this is so true for me. I've shared before that the first line of THE ROOFER was a line I wrote when I was 16 or 17. My first instinct was to look at the corpse. And that line was inserted in multiple beginnings of multiple short stories, none of which I finished. Then, the right novel, the right story came along, and the book flowed from the first line to the last.

I have dozens of unfinished works on my computer. Books and stories that REFUSE to be written. Oh, I can wrestle with them and try. But in the end, I am defeated. Which is not to say defeat is forever. It's only until the right form presents itself, and the I usually wonder why it was so hard for so long.

Anyone else have this experience?

Peace,
E

P.S. And . . . . SPY wins the the copy of BLOOD SON. Email me at my "Contact Me" with your address and I'll mail it off. Karmela was a very close second, but Spy . . . your tale showed true dedication. ;-)

Strangest Thing Ever-CONTEST`

Okay writers (that's anyone who writes . . . pubbed or not) . . . a little contest. A copy of BLOOD SON to the writer who has done the "strangest thing ever . . ." in the name of research.

Yes . . . it's research time for me. I am researching plants. Nothing too strange there.

But . . . the strangest thing ever? In the name of research?

Watching an autopsy CD complete with slicing, dicing, and weighing the liver. I think that's the strangest thing I've ever done. Though I have recently been Googling "cyanide" so I hope I don't ever get arrested for murder as it will look might suspicious to the police if they check my Google searches (Big Brother is alive and well).

So..........spread the word. And share. What's the Strangest Thing Ever . . . .

Same Territory

You know that adage "write what you know"? I do follow that for the most part. I write about colorful fathers, and loyal siblings. I write about NYC. I write about people who don't take no for an answer. I write about the people and places I know. And sometimes, though the characters change from book to book, I do return to the same SORTS of characters.

I am working on a new proposal . . . and there are ELEMENTS--bits and pieces--that remind me of territory I've covered. As we on this blog call it, if I hop on The Couch, I might say that perhaps I return to those elements because there are still parts of my life, my past, my present, my psyche that haven't put to rest some of those themes. On the other hand, I might also say the themes I write about . . . I love them. So I write what I love. I might also think that I find my groove as a writer when I write about grief and betrayal and family secrets and bonds and the clan of dysfunctional love.

And I wonder . . . At what point do you put "those kinds" of books to rest? At what point is a writer just rehashing the same old sh*t, and at what point is it still fresh and creative? Why do some writers return to the same sorts of stories over and over successfully? And some it seems stale? How are some authors able to keep recurring characters fresh and some ho-hum?

AND . . . drum roll . . . why do some readers get angry to see a writer branch out . . . or vice versa . . . get irritated by the familiar? Can a writer with a successful series ever win?

Thoughts?

What's Different?

Another great quote:

You can take for granted that people know more or less what a street, a shop, a beach, a sky, an oak tree look like.

Tell them what makes this one different.

Neil Gaiman

I love this quote because this goes along with discussions about detail here at the blog. When I described John's Bar in The Roofer, I didn't just tell readers it was a Hell's Kitchen bar. Unless you've been to a bar there, that description would actually be rather useless. Instead, I described the patina of nicotine, how you could use your fingernail to scratch your name into the wall. I remember standing there, another wake, another time years ago, and I had been away from the bar for years, and when I found I could literally write with my nail in the nicotine stains, which had the drips of Jackson Pollack and the color of diseased lung, coating the walls, I knew I needed to write about the walls. What made them different from the walls of most bars. When I wrote about the smell . . . a combination of urine and vomit permeating the bathroom--with a single bare bulb in it . . . well, it was home. I love the place. Loved it (past tense) since it has now closed. We "waked" the bar. Honest to God. We said good-bye to it--and the place was packed so deep at the wake that you couldn't walk.

So there it is. What's different? When I speak to kids, I tell them to banish words like pretty from their writing. Evil. Strange. Eerie. Bizarre. Ugly. All meaningless. Utterly meaningless. A beautiful place full of memories for me--truly wonderful memories--would likely be a place most of you reading this would rather run from, a bar whose door you would never darken without bringing along your own security detail. You certainly wouldn't want to use the restroom. Or touch anything. Or order food, heaven forbid. To make it come alive, I have to tell people what's different.

So what makes your hero different? Your heroine? Your setting? What's different? Is this a concept you use when writing?

Beach Reads and Drew Barrymore at Gunpoint

Last night, at gunpoint, my mother and I forced my dad to watch Music & Lyrics with us on cable.

Okay, that's not true. I don't own a gun. But he hates Drew Barrymore (she's not my fave either) and so it was, as he puts it, "under duress" that we watched it. He had to make that known to us. He also had to tell us it was "contrived."

But my mom loves Hugh Grant. As for me, I had seen the movie before with daughter #2 and I knew what I was getting. I.e., for what it is, I laughed.

And THAT is the beauty of Beach Reads. People often disparage beach reads, commercial fiction, light reading and B-movies. Like being entertained is a BAD thing. And sometimes I love a deep, heavy book. If you look at my bookshelves, it is full of tomes on physics, Buddhism, scientific discoveries, biographies, etc. Not a beach read in the bunch. Which isn't to say that I don't like them. Sometimes, I just want to curl up with something I know the ending to. That I know will let me laugh (like the movie). I like to know what I am getting.

Thoughts?
E

Someone Once Said . . .

I've decided to try to dig up some good quotes about writing and process and share them every once in a while. My first quote comes from a true writing genius:

I try to leave out the parts that people skip. ~Elmore Leonard

I chose Elmore's quote because I definitely have learned a few things about writing from things he's said in interviews, books he's written. And this one quote really speaks to me.

Why?

Because my name is Erica Orloff, and I am a skipper. (Heretofore an ANONYMOUS skipper, but now I've admitted it. And that I am powerless to change the way I read.)

Can't help it. A book has to be extraordinary for me to read every word. Otherwise, I skip.

But more than that, as a writer, this is my style. When Spanish Disco first came out (my very first novel), I got a lot of very nice emails from readers who liked the edginess of it. I got a great blurb in Cosmopolitan magazine. I was thrilled to have my first novel out there. It was also at the relative beginnings of chick lit in the U.S.--not that I think you can pin it on a single date or year or book. Nonetheless, when you went to the bookstore, there weren't row upon row of pink covers (not that mine was pink) in trade size flooding the new release table. Chick lit was hot. And a few readers DEFINITELY let me know that I had a lot of nerve thinking my book was chick lit.

Well, the problem was, I never had. I wrote a comedy. I never considered genre--I just happened to try to sell an edgy comedy when that was what publishers were buying--and marketing. But Spanish Disco, as one online reviewer wrote, didn't have the Sex and the City vibe. There were no name brands mentioned. No parties. No wildly funny friends. No Cosmopolitans. None of that. Part of it was Cassie Hayes, my heroine, was a tequila-swilling b*tch and a loner. Part of it was I don't particularly care about any of those things--name brands and Cosmos. That would be the part I skipped.

So I left all that "skip" stuff out. In fact, as I went on to write 5 more novels for Red Dress Ink, with one exception, none of them had that vibe. Because that would be the part I skipped. I don't drown people in details. I can't read historicals for precisely that reason.

And therein is part of it, too. People who like historicals would NEVER skip the details. That's part of what they love. Me, I like dialogue. The more realistic the better. And I skip to that part. It's all subjective.

So . . . do you skip? What parts? And do you find you hack away at the "skip" parts in your own work?

Readers Are Your Friends

Yesterday, I had a fairly large speaking engagement--I would guess 70 people for wine and cheese and a book signing at a local golf club. Surprisingly, since I don't like public speaking, I didn't throw up, didn't put them all to sleep, and the whole thing went rather well--at least for me. Hopefully they all felt the same. If not, hopefully they all enjoyed their wine and cheese. Oh, and there were pastries . . . so that was a bonus.

However, prior to my speaking engagement, while freaking out at home, my father told me, "The trick to public speaking . . . ."

And I assumed he was going to tell me "is to picture your audience naked." Which I have never understood. Why would talking to nudists make it any easier--yet people routinely give this advice.

But my father surprised me. "The trick to public speaking is to imagine that everyone in the room is your FRIEND. You're just hanging out with friends talking."

"But I don't HAVE 70 friends."

To which my dad thought I was being difficult.

BUT, while I was there yesterday, it was surprisingly easy to picture them all as friends. The gathering was large, yet intimate. It was a lot of fun. (Again, at least for me. Maybe they all were simply plied with wine.)

Which got me thinking . . . when I write, I never picture readers as real people. It's only at signing events that I ever stop to think that real people read my books. Fan mail does that, too, I suppose. And reader emails, of which I get quite a bit. But even that is somewhat faceless with the anonymity of cyberspace.

So when you write, do you picture a room full of friends? Your critique partner? Readers browsing a bookstore? A single solitary reader? Yourself? No one? I'd love to know . . .

I Can't Make This Stuff Up

I think I gave up the idea of being a journalist over this little thing called fact-checking. Basically, I am lazy. I also didn't like having to ask just the right question to get just the right quote from a taciturn source. So now I get to MAKE UP dialogue and insert whatever I want into my characters' mouths. It's a lot easier. Yes, my entire career choice has been dominated by the idea that I prefer to sit around in my pjs and make stuff up for a living.

Except . . .

Yesterday I walked into my family room. My parents are visiting. And Grandma taught two-year-old baby to call a certain political figure a "STINKIN' FACIST." And Baby says it perfectly. So now, political figure steps up to podium, and Baby points at the TV and says, "He's a stinkin' facist."

No. I am not lying. I am not making it up.

Now, the funny thing, I suppose, is since I happen to agree with my mother's politics, I don't particularly mind. I had taught him the word "neofacist." Mom just upped the ante. My father said he wanted to teach Baby to say "stinkin' f*cking facist." He was stopped. However, I presume on my child's vocabulary journey, that's just a stepping stone away around his grandfather.

But here's the thing. At some point, I will use this in a book. Maybe it's because my family is eccentric. Maybe because my sense of humor leaves me laughing about this and not aghast. But I'm going to use it. I don't know when. But it will happen. It might be five books from now, but it's definitely usable material.

And so, I have decided, being a novelist is very much a matter of making stuff up for a living. But it's also about going through life looking for material. Much like a stand-up comic, I suppose. And then figuring out a way to use it.

So . . . is that how you, as a writer, go through your life? I know there are some fantasy writers who post here regularly. I wonder if they still use real-life stuff or it's all completely made up. Thriller writers . . . see somthing on the news and decide to use it? What is the process?

Because for me . . . I make most of it up. But . . . well, I guess not really, afterall.

Learning to Make a Hat

When you are a full-time writer, who loves to read, and who loves to write for fun, but you also make your LIVING at it, sometimes, it seems like your entire world is writing and reading.

As some of my regular blog readers know, the last month or so has been in a word . . . a bitch. I am exhausted, stressed, having memory issues BECAUSE I am so stressed, like walking into the same room five times, forgetting why the hell I was going there in the first place.

Now my parents are visiting and I am getting less sleep than ever. They are night owls. I usually am in bed by ten p.m., but I am staying up late to spend time with them--but still getting up before dawn with the kids while my parents sleep in until 9:00 a.m. I am to the point where sometimes I even wonder if I am making sense when I speak because I am so tired.

BUT . . . one really great thing is happening.

I love to knit. LOVE it. So far, knitting in my world has consisted of making very lopsided scarves with holes where there shouldn't be any. After a while, I mastered scarves that AREN'T lopsided, and they have no dropped stitches. So I decided to up my repertoire to make a hat and a blanket. But this isn't something I find "easy." I can't learn by reading. I have to learn by DOING, and thus I need a knitting mentor to guide me through Hatmaking 101.

Enter Mom. I am halfway through making a hat with three different colors of yarn for my baby. And as she walks me through how to switch out stitches and yarns and master a more complicated project . . . I am reminded how much I ADORE knitting. I haven't knit a thing since Christmas--too busy. Too tired. All the excuses.

But sitting with her until late each night, making a hat, I am reminded that, tired as I am, making time for nonwriting things, nonreading things, is important. It staves off burnout. My garden is also something I adore for the same reason.

So, writers and readers, do you find you have to make time for hobbies so you don't get too burned out? And what hobbies do you have? And do you have to FORCE yourself to make time for them? I wonder, too, if I feel this way because I make a LIVING as a writer and it doesn't seem like a hobby anymore, but something that has to be worked like a business at times, much as I love it.

I Have a Desk Afterall

Well, it turns out that under the mass of papers . . . I do, indeed, have a desk.

It's no secret the last several weeks have been horrible. The Queen of England once called such a period the "annus horribilis" at her annual speech. I'm not a queen . . . but yes, I'll invoke Latin. It's been an annus horribilis. Or, in plain English, lately life has sucked.

Because of the funeral, insanity, and so much going on, filing has pretty much consisted of wadding up fistfuls of reeceipts and shoving them in a basket on my desk. When that got too full, it spilled to my desk, when that got so I couldn't even SEE it, I felt like I was having a breakdown. No place to work, no place to THINK. So today, Saturday, I woke up at 5:30 a.m., figuring all my kids would be sleeping in, and I filed. And it turns out that yes, I have a desk. And it turns out that cleaning it off CAN indeed bring me a little peace of mind.

So . . . who else has organizational issues? You can come here to Messy Desks Anonymous. Or, if you are very NEAT, but you can share you neatness techniques. I'll try not to vomit.

Peace,
E

My Rhythm

So usually one of the first questions anyone who meets me and finds out I am a novelist AND a mother of four asks is . . . "WHEN do you find time to write?" And if the person is an aspiring writer, they ask, "Do you write every day?" The answer to the first is "Whenver I can" and the second is usually maniacal laughter, as in, "You've GOT to be kidding me."

But I do have a rhythm. Wake up before dawn, answer email, blog, organize my brain for the day. Get three of the four kids off to school, get baby up, and then write "when I can" My house has a rhythm of its own, and I know when I can enjoy a quiet half-hour and when that's futile.

But now, my parents are staying with me for the next two weeks. My father is blind, so that means NOTHING can be on the floors. No matchbox cars, no blocks. The three dogs must be kept out of his way since he can't see them. And so you know that rhythm thing? Gone! I have no rhythm because my world is completely out of sorts. I spend the day running after my toddler picking up the things he throws on the floor, having nightmarish visions of my father breaking a damn hip on a Lego.

It doesn't take much to throw off my rhythm. A cold. A kid in a bad mood. Visitors. Whatever. What fragile space I carve out for my writing disappears. Or the quiet and music I am used to is replaced by TV (my father watches TV all day . . . yes, watches--we have a HUGE set and he can see it a bit. And he can listen.).

Do you have a rhythm to your writing routine? What is it? Do you write every day? And can it be thrown off track easily?