Happy New Year's!

I'm always a little sad at the end of one year and the beginning of the next. Time literally does fly for me. I often feel as if I'm hanging onto it, digging in my heels, trying to slow it down. But then one night you go to bed (okay, maybe in the wee hours!) and the next day a whole year has gone by.

This year has been a little tough around my house, and I'm superstitiously hoping for a calm and peaceful, happy 2007. So for once, without any melancholy at all, Happy New Year!

And to readers--streams of excellent books that won't let you put them down. To writers--may brilliant ideas fly at you so fast you only have time to write them!

The best time in a book

I'm working on the early pages/planning of a new proposal. It's like falling in love--new love. I've been struggling with several ideas that hit a wall. Dead ends that refused to open up, but finally, I've found something that just keeps opening--plot point after plot point.

It's like flying.

We're meeting friends today, and though I'm dying to work, I'm also excited about spending time with one of my best friends and my own sweet daughter (who insists on going back to school in a few days) in a bookstore. In fact, my girl visited a bookstore with one of her friends yesterday, but figured she could save her pennies since the mom would be supporting her reading habit today. What's up with that?

Gotta pack this thing up. You know writing is the right job when you take the laptop 'cause you might get a few words in on the drive!

I hope the holidays are still treating everyone well.

Time is Speeding Up

Busy day today.

1. Tidying book
2. Tidying house
3. Family arriving for the holiday! Yay!

Wishing all the best for you and yours during the holidays!

Fly By Post

I'm close to finishing the book, so I'm cheating today as all my thoughts are on the story. A dear friend, Sharon, sent me the following in email, and I never manage to pass on chains, but I thought I'd answer it here! Thanks, Sharon for the blog help! ;-)

(Not sure where #1 went.)

2. What color are your socks right now?
--White anklets with teal trim

3. What are you listening to right now?
--A ticking clock. (Excellent symbol for a writer on deadline, but also true!)

4. What was the last thing you ate?
--In my defense, did I mention I'm on deadline? A dark chocolate, chocolate covered cherry.

5. Can you drive a stick shift?
--I prefer to drive a stick!

6. Favorite color to wear:
--Pink

7. Last person you talked to on the phone?
--Melinda Curtis, Superromance author extraordinaire!

8. Do you like the person who sent this to you?
--Love her!

9. How old are you today?
--Surely you jest!

10. Favorite drink
--Sweet tea!

11. What is your favorite sport?
--Baseball

12. Have you ever dyed your hair?
--Just glad the question wasn't how many times!

13. Pets?
--Handsome Kitty--who was also a gift from Sharon

14. Favorite food?
--Olives

15. What was the last movie you watched?
--Christmas in Connecticut

16. Favorite day of the year?
--The first cold day

17. What do you do to vent anger?
--Walk

18. What was your favorite toy as a child?
--My blue pedal car

19. What is your favorite, Fall or Spring?
--Definitely fall

20. Hugs or kisses?
--Hugs

21. Cherry or Blueberry?
--Cherry

22. Do you want your friends to email you back?
--I like that as a rule, but I'm not emailing the list.

23. Who is most likely to respond?
--N/A

24. Who is least likely to respond?
--N/A

25. Living arrangements?
--Live with two really good housemates--the dh and the daughter

26. When was the last time you cried?
--Last night because Mel told me a friend of ours who's been ill is going to be all right.

27. What is on the floor of your closet?
--Two briefcases and an AlphaSmart

28. Who is the friend you're sending this to that has been your
friend the longest?
--N/A

29. What did you do last night?
--Baked oatmeal raisin cookies, finished holiday wrapping, worked, talked to Mel

Feel free to do the list in comments or add a link to your own blog. I'd love to see your answers!

Not saying much--because I'm writing

Does anyone get to a deadline without tunnel vision? All I can see right now is the book--and the UPS guy, thoughtfully delivering all my holiday shopping! :-)

And--it's always this time in the book that new ideas start popping in my head. I'm loving the characters I'm working with, but maybe once their story begins to finish in my mind, I start finding new situations for new characters. And you know what that's like? Brand new love! As if I were living it myself. I'm quite happy with the love I've been married to for--well, that math's too demanding--but the excitement of new love is so alluring!

Any other writers out there? Do you find a "usual" time for the new ideas to start popping?

Chatting on eHarlequin.com

Tonight is the eHarlequin Holiday Open House. I'm chatting during the Hearth and Home hour. Hope to talk with readers about Superromance. Click this link to visit with all the participating Harlequin/Silhouette authors!

http://community.eharlequin.com/webx?14@@.4a83f740

Writers and Introverts

I tend to be both. For one thing I've moved to a new area and most of my friends are about an hour away. Hard to visit when I'm under a deadline--hard to just horn into their workdays because I haven't spoken aloud in four days. :-)

But here's what I wonder. What goes on in a writer's brain? Some love the spotlight, bask in it, can handle any promo opportunity. For others (like me), the spotlight is a scary place, even on the tiny scale on which it hardly ever swings upon me. I'm happiest here in my cave, working away.

But, I put stories out in the world that represent my thoughts and feelings about the way people love each other and live together. Sure, my stories are fiction, but each of them has to contain parts of me, if only because my thoughts must in some way dictate the way I write--the way I look at a fictional world.

I'm not alone. I talk to so many other writers who feel this way, too. How do we natural hermits find the courage to do this wonderful, best-of-all jobs?

Just another writing day

I'd love to launch into a pithy note about my workday, but I can't. This is a typical day for me. I woke downstairs on the couch, where I'd lurched about 4 a.m., after my kitty decided I needed reminding that he eats breakfast. (He's only 13 years old. In his opinion, someday, I'll learn. Until then, he needs to step on my face and purr in my ear, and if that doesn't work, he starts pushing stuff off the nightstand.)

So--the beloved showed up at about 5:30. He started the coffee. I took my blankie and laptop upstairs to work, and about 8 remembered I'd agreed to go to breakfast with him. (He's recently retired and he needs someone to play with.) After breakfast, we went home where I stared at my laptop in the too-silent house.

The creative force doesn't always flourish in silence.

So, I packed up and headed to the local coffee shop, where, by the way, they do have this distracting wifi. ==:0

On the way, I was distracted by the local "warehouse" store, where I found a lovely present for the beloved and a compilation from a group I vaguely remember my older brother listening to in my dim youth. You don't know it, but Bread is even now seranading you with "If," one of the most beautiful songs I've ever heard.

What a lucky day!

Oh, for the Mod Cons!

Is anyone else in the world still on dial-up? I live six miles from the center of town, but you'd think this was the wilderness. Every time my husband sees a phone service truck, he prays aloud for DSL. I tend to be a little Calvinistic--you know--pleasure should only come through suffering. But he talked me into DSL and then wireless in the home we moved out of three months ago.

This must be the suffering for that pleasure.

However, it keeps me better focused on writing, when a deadline's hanging over my head like an anvil. The suffering of reaching the Internet through dial-up is almost unbearable! :-)

First Time

I hope all bloggers want to be really clever or witty or wise when they write their first post--and I'm not Lone Captain Insecurity.

Since I want to make this blog about writing (despite a strong, not so hidden talent for digression), I'll just say, I'm at the stage where the characters are controlling my life--my daughter tells me I'm not myself. Yeah, cause I'm about five other people too, right now. I'm distracted, cause I'll suddenly think--my hero, Van, whom I love so much will be more lovable to readers, too, if I show him... If you're also a writer, you'll know this stage. I'm deep in deadline panic.

So, this is short, but I have to focus on turning in the book. Kind of funny. I'm so busy writing, I don't have much time to write about writing. The blog's new. I'll be editing and changing as I go, but I've managed to put up some of the blogs I must compulsively read before I get to work each day, and that's a start.

It's nice to ride in at last--however late--on the blogging wave!