After long silence

I haven't been posting much about the writing life lately, but that's largely because the writing life has been not so fabulous.

Oh, there are good things going on. First off, I'm going to Oregon to do a writers' retreat with Dayle and a bunch of other good folks, leaving on March 2. We'll be staying here, which you can see is very near the ocean and you know how good that is for me. I'm very excited about this and hope it will get my brain back in gear.

For alas, it really hasn't been of late. I've been plugging away on Master Right, and the end is in sight, but it's at the stage where I'm convinced it sucks like a shop-vac and should be deleted. (It's not true. I know it. It's a first draft, so there's some suckage involved, but it is not like unto the vacuum of space.) Dayle and I are hard at work on Out of the Frying Pan, which I know doesn't suck, but is coming slowly (although we'll be focusing a lot on it in Oregon). We've got a paranormal novella started and I'm excited about that, but it's not at the front of the queaue right now.

And that leads me to the problem: excitement. I like Master Right, but it seems like I've been working on it forever. (So finish it already, my common sense says.) I love Out of the Frying Pan, but due to its structure, I get to work on it in fits and snorts, then hand it back to Dayle; it's too closely viewpointed to have us each working as we did with CSF. And the paranormal? I love hot, sexy paranormals and am looking forward to this one, but we have a few things to finish up first. So many projects, so little brain space. I've been feeling very strongly, of late, that writing is work. Which, of course, it is, but more often than not, it's work I love.

Today I realized that it's the time of year when my creative process is always at its lowest ebb. Late winter is a bad time for me. I'd managed to hold off the doldrums with regular outdoor exercise, but we had a fierce cold snap for a few weeks and I just couldn't do it. But for some reason, I just couldn't figure out myself that my writing blahs were related. (Those who have known me for a while are welcome, nay, encouraged, to laugh.) Today, though, was lovely and sunny and relatively warm. I got a massage, took a long walk in the woods (on ice, sure, but I still took it!)--and came home, cleaned the altar in my office, lit some candles, and sat down to write two poems.

Then I read over the last bit of Master Right, which I was convinced was Vacuum of Space or perhaps even Black Hole bad. It's not. It has some rough spots, but it rings true. The sex is hot and disturbing in equal measures, which it's supposed to be because it's angry sex. Angry kinky sex that leads to the black moment.

I may be getting them out of the black moment too easily, but I'm going to write it as it is in my head and worry about it in the second draft.

Then I started making notes for a novella/long short story involving how the secondary couple in Master Right got together.

I think my brain's working again. Glee!

Glad I'm starting to feel better!