Celebration Time

I’m starting a new book and having way more fun than should be allowed, so I thought I’d set off a few firecrackers early.  I adore the 4th of July and it’s never too early to celebrate! 

                                                                                                                               

I’m throwing in that comment to make up for the other 360 days a year when I whine and bellyache and make like writing is such a mindbending, backbreaking profession.  Let’s face it, we’re being paid to make up lies for a living.  How much better can it get than that?  On top of lying for a living, we can throw ex-spouses, back-stabbing friends, and old bosses into the book and blow them up and torture them if we like.  Writing is what happens when you spend too much time daydreaming!

    And since today is an unusually gorgeous day, I can take my pen and paper out to the patio or courtyard and scribble and rock while I work, listening to the birds cheap, watching the chipmunks scamper… until the neighbor turns on his leaf blower anyway.

    I know the heat and humidity will return tomorrow and my editor will call and ask just what I was thinking when I made the heroine smack the hero in front of an audience and my agent will call and tell me my new proposal is unmarketable, but in the meantime, Happy Fourth, Happy Birthday Whoever, Happy Life Everyone!

               And for the gardeners among you, here’s my ash tree… (Now, if only I could make these images stay where I put them instead of lining up like little soldiers...)   

Comments

[Susan/Sarah]

Pat, I love that -- "writing is what happens when you spend too much time daydreaming." And you're so right, it's a great way to earn a living. Now and then we should forget about the little foibles and quibbles (ok, some big quibbles too) and take time to celebrate good fortune with some firecrackers and starry showers of sparks, and a toast or two, because we get to go to work in our pjs (if we want) and write about the stuff of dreams!

(and Pat's new ms. really is the stuff of dreams -- I've read a few pages and it's fabulous, will be much fun!)

Love the ash tree. You're lucky to have good weather right now! We're awash out here on the east coast, caught in the monsoon.

Susan, whose backyard is looking like a pond today

[Cathy]

What a beautiful ash tree...

[Edith]

Yes, on the daydreaming/writing connection!
But some of us have a hard time with gorgeous weather.
I was going to write today. Ha.
I rushed outside to get some done in a rare spot of sun.
For a week now, it's been rain, wind, mist and more rain, and today - all kinds of weather blown by a brisk breeze.
Too exiting to see to write.
Tomorrow they say it will be too rainy to write.
Edith, too easily distracted by weather
(btw - Happy Fourth! We're getting rain!)

[Sherrie Holmes]

From Sherrie:

Pat, don't you just love starting a new book?!! The energy, the excitement, the enthusiasm are all there, and you are fresh and full of ideas and new characters.

I love starting a new story. I can't write fast enough during those first 100-150 pages.

But oh, Edith, if there is anything that can distract me from my writing, it has to be a sunshiny day after a bout of rain!

Beautiful tree, Pat. I have a black locust tree that I dearly love. It shades the front porch, and its lacy leaves flutter and dance in the wind, making a kaleidoscope of shifting shadows and patterns on my face and arms and hands whenever I pop outside to breathe in the lusty scents of fresh cut grass, sweet-smelling azaleas, and pollen (hack, cough)

Two weeks ago this tree was at the end of its blooming season (it has the most wonderfully sweet-smelling white flowers!) and as I sat at my computer, I could see showers of blossom "snow" drift past my window in the wind. Every morning I'd have to sweep snowdrifts of blossoms off the porch. Small price to pay for the joy this 100-year-old tree gives me.

Sherrie Holmes

[Mary Jo Putney]

Lovely tree and lovely setting, Pat. But where are the deer with their napkins and tableclothes? :)

Mary Jo

[Patricia Rice]

Ah, ye who know this writing gig too well! Sympathies on the rain. I'll try to move there next. We always bring drought.

And Sherrie, someone who loves beginning as much as I do! Do you hate endings? I loathe them above anything. The locust sounds gorgeous. Ash tree pollen isn't anywhere near as pretty but just as rough on the sinus.

Thank you, Susan/Sarah for the kind words. There are days I need all I can get, and look, they're preserved here forever! Cool. Built-in archives. too bad we can't categorize comments so we can label them "good thoughts" and go back and find them easier. .

My camera isn't fast enough to catch the deer, but I'll try for the jackrabbit if you like, MJ. I'll find him right over the portulaca about sunset.

[shscott21]

Ahh, Pat, I know exactly what you mean!

The next book will be wonderful, bursting with promise and genius, the kind of perfect book that will sell zillions, garner rave reviews, and practically write itself.

The last book you finished and is now in production and out of your hands is pretty good, considering, and especially because it's done.

But the it's the current MIP that's always such a trial, slower than molasses, with more trips to the delete key than forward progress -- the kind of miserable experience that makes you keep checking the word count and praying it's wrong.

At least that's how it is for ME. :)

But leaveblowers, the bane of all writers everywhere: bah, a pox on them and their noisy kin. I'll take the fireworks anyday.

Susan/Miranda

[Nina P]

Hi All:

I love hearing you talk about a writer's life. Thank you.

I did the 'going to work in my pjs' thing for years. I am my most creative in my pjs. Whether it's writing a computer program, a newspaper article or a user manual, it's best done in flannel. But is flannel really what one should be wearing when writing romance? Hummm….

Nina
-- the littlest wenchling who leaves romance writing to the professionals. ;-)

[talpianna]

This seems to be my week for nice tree pics. Someone on another forum just planted one of these:

http://www.ufpe.br/ccs/ipe.jpg

[LorettaChase]

From Loretta:
I too love the beginnings, when all is potential. But further in, the WIP forces you to face your limitations. And yes, Susan/Miranda, I too know the book I haven't written yet is going to be brilliant.
May I add another bane of this writer's existence? Barking dogs. At least the leaf blowers stop eventually. Unhappy dogs go on and on.

[Sherrie Holmes]

From Sherrie:

"And Sherrie, someone who loves beginning as much as I do! Do you hate endings? I loathe them above anything."

Heh heh. Not me. I love endings too, because by then I've gotten my second wind, it's all downhill, and the long and difficult gestation is over.

So beginnings are my favorite, and endings my second favorite. And by the time the ending is in sight, I'm already champing at the bit to get started on the next novel that's been burbling around in my brain.

My big problem is Sagging Middles. Once the adrenaline rush is over, I start to slow down in the middle. I'm a pantser rather than a plotter. I fly by the seat of my pants. If I spend too much time exhaustively plotting out my book and characters, I lose interest before I start. I'd rather devote that time and energy and enthusiasm to just writing the darned thing! I admire anyone disciplined enough to be a plotter. I wish I could.

I think we all eventually fall into a natural style of writing that fits us best, and as someone said earlier, trying to force yourself into a different mold is probably doomed to failure from the start.

When I start a book, I know the beginning and the end (I have to know the ending so I'll have a target to aim at). It's just the middles the bog me down.

But I've found a little trick that may have cured that. I stop worrying about the middle and go ahead and make the turn for the homestretch, even if it feels like it still needs a middle.

What I've found is that once the book is done, I have the joy of discovering I've got some room to go back and pad and plump what I already have without worrying about word count, and by the time that process is done, I discover I have a middle after all. (g)

Sherrie
http://www.holmesedit.com

[Denise]

I have that "sagging middle" problem, too, and I'm not even a writer, LOL.

[Nina P]

I am really loving this post. Read it through again this am.

Denise -- LOL! With you on the 'sagging middle'. Got one of them too.

Can one of the Word Wenches speak to their experiences with 'sagging middle' -- the ms kind?

:-)
Nina

[Lynn]

I'm putting the comment here on your request at the Amazon blog thing to let you know that people are seeing it (well, I am at least.)

[Patricia Rice]

Isn't it amazing what a fantastic bestselling concept a new book is? And what a miserable wretch of a thing it is by the time the last word is written?

Talp, that's a great tree, but I can't imagine what kind of deciduous tree looks like that where they have palm trees. But it's cool. Have you ever seen a golden raintree? I don't have one anymore so can't post the picture.

I think an entire blog for a week could address the sagging middle problem (the ms kind ). Sherrie hits on the beginning of it...start the ending when you get to the middle!

And whooeee, I finally worked out the Amazon plog thing and I exist out there! Thanks Lynn!

[Sherrie Holmes]

From Sherrie:

Pat, I couldn't agree with you more! It would be great to have a week devoted to sagging middles. I know this is a problem for many writers, because I've read published books that suffer from this syndrome! I'll bet there are a lot of people out there with ingenious ways of dealing with the problem.

Sherrie

[talpianna]

Golden raintree:

http://plantranch.net/raintree.jpg

Pat, it's a golden trumpet tree (Tabebuia chrysantha). The people who mentioned having them live in Miami, Brazil, and New Zealand.

And it's "Tal." TALP! is the sound I make when someone steps on my little mole tail...

[Nina P]

Hi Tal:

Love the golden raintree. It looks like it would smell of sweet honeysuckle.

There's a row of trees I walk past on my way to work that, during the height of spring, looked like your golden raintree. I don't know what my 'one the way to work' trees are, but they had that 'gold plumage' look and smelled heavenly.

Nina

[Patricia Rice]

Sorry, Tal! yelp.