Some days, putting words down on paper is a challenge.  Too many days lately, it’s been bloody AGONY.  Those are the days where my only communication with the internet world is one or two tweets.  When I need to make a menu and grocery list but the thought of even writing down the days of the week makes me nauseous.  And too many times, it’s the days when I’m due to write our blog post.  It’s easy to wave it away.  “It’s just one post, they won’t notice.”  Or “Emery posted last week, so we’re fine.” Until I look at the blog and realize it’s been almost a month since either of us posted.  So this is me, pulling up my big girl panties and writing.  Not necessarily exciting words, but this, too, is part of the writing process.  We shall overcome.  Woot.

We are actually working.  We’ve been getting the revisions done on the next Creatures book, which is going, but slowly.  (In fact, I think the current round is with me.  Whoops.)  Emery’s getting poked by her zombie series (which is not a series about zombies, although she should be working on that, too), and I am determined, DETERMINED to finish my zombie as well.  

Emery alluded to zombie stories in her last post.  These are the stories that you have declared dead and are determined not to write on any more, and yet they won’t leave you alone, poking at you and distracting you with guilt and flickers of idea without ever giving you a full-blown muse moment.  I’ve had one of these haunting me since the Pittsburgh RT Convention in 2008. 2008.  I had put it aside after reworking it twice and never being happy with it.  But it’s only two scenes away from being done, and my writing mind knows that.  It’s been very “You can’t have dessert until you eat your meat” with me, and I blame it in part for my current writing stagnation.  So I am determined I am going to break the curse.  I am going to finish this story, and I am going to submit it, and then I won’t ever have to think about it ever, ever again.  I’ll be able to move on to write other things.  I open the file every day, and if I can write just 100 words a day on the missing sections, eventually it has to end.  Right?  

Oh, please God, be right…

It all began a couple weeks ago when my Sequel From Hell™ for the Morton’s Pointe gang reared up its head and started begging for me to pay attention to it again…for the umpteenth time in five years. It’s the story that refused to die. Which seems to be a good thing as I finally, FINALLY finished it earlier this week. Beginning, middle, and END (with a few gappy bits in between). The never to be finished story and been finished. Of course there’s the revision/rewriting process, etc. Some stories aren’t meant to be finished…and some are. Those are the ones that just won’t die, no matter how many times you set them aside and say, “You are dead to me, Story, begone!” You just never know.

I think part of what helped keep me forging ahead this time was this nifty little blog post that our too busy cohort Scarlett linked to us. More often than not, that’s what it comes down to. When the muse peters out and you sit there wondering what the hell you were thinking… Fuck ‘em. Your biggest enemy is that doubting voice in your head that says you’re a fool for thinking anyone would ever want to read the words you’ve written. Do you even want to read those words?

And it’s even more discouraging when you have actually published stuff and find that the stories and the characters you love…few people seem to care. You get lucky with one story, then every other one you put out there, well, you’re lucky to fuel your Starbucks habit with them. It’s so easy to get caught up in that, to try to find that formula that gets you the royalty check that makes you giddy when you open it.

But it can’t be about the money. It can’t be about readers. It’s ultimately about the love between you and your creation. Fuck everything else. If you don’t love it, if there’s no joy in it for you…then fuck it. Don’t be afraid of writing the story that no one else will read. If you want to read it and, therefore, write it, then nothing else matters. If the story just won’t die, be it on its first version or tenth, keep going. Clearly something inside of you wants to see this done.

Some stories aren’t meant to be finished. That’s okay, too. You can’t be afraid to move onto something new either. But sometimes, you just have to buckle down and finished that one story that’s been hanging over your head for years in order to be truly free. And let me tell you, there is nothing more satisfying than finishing something you never, ever, EVER thought you would.

And in the midst of all my tribulations these past couple weeks with the Sequel From Hell™, I seem to have motivated Grey to take down her own WIP albatross that’s been hanging around her neck for far too long. *cheers* It’s those little things that make it worthwhile.

So, lessons learned: Not every story is meant to be. Then again, some stories you just have to plow through and finish because otherwise they will hang over your head and drag you down until you feel like an utter failure and why the fuck do you bother anyway. Every so often you get a story that just seems to click, everything falls into place and the words just flow.

When it’s easy, there’s no higher high. When it’s hard, there’s no lower low. But easy or hard, when you finish…it always feels fucking fantastic.

Now available from Amber Quill Press Amber Allure: Blood on the Mountain. This will eventually be partnered with Under a Rock as a paperback collection of protection-themed stories, Watch My Back.

From Chicago to Rio, from the beaches to the slums, Blood on the Mountainhas plenty to offer both outside the bedroom and in. And really, who can say no to a hunky, reluctant ex-FBI agent and an idealistic and determined entrepreneur?

That’s great, it starts with an earthquake, birds and snakes, an aeroplane -
Lenny Bruce is not afraid. Eye of a hurricane, listen to yourself churn …

You’ve gotta wonder how much overplay that song’s getting this week, you know?  Too bad Snakes on a Plane wasn’t released this year, because then you could argue that the year started with aflockalypse, then we had some mother fucking snakes on a motherfucking plane, followed up later in the year by an unexpected earthquake on the East Coast, and now Hurricane Irene bearing down. Although, I suppose you don’t have to reach quite that far to make it work—since earthquakes make animals act weird (and birds and snakes are animals) and the airports were shut down for a bit following… How Lenny Bruce fits into all that I’m still working on.

So, yeah, it’s been a week, hasn’t it?  If you’ve caught my twitter or LJ or other blogs, you’ll know I not only wiped out emerysanborne.com and am still rebuilding, but that my glass-top IKEA desk shattered/exploded thanks the earthquake (the wobbly action figures didn’t move a fraction). And, save site issues until I switched hosting, I’ve handled the whole crazy week pretty well.

On the writing front, not much new due to the general life-ness of life, but that’ll shake out in the end. It always does.

Until then, batten down the hatches and stay safe.

It’s back to school time, which for my kids means losing all the extra video game time they’ve been squeezing in around camp (especially my teenager who hasn’t had camp), and for me it means purging all their clothes to figure out what they need new and then going shopping. Which is okay. I like school shopping. I’ve always been an office supply junkie. Back in college, I would come up with a new organizational system every semester just to have an excuse to buy new stuff. I would also buy textbooks for classes I wasn’t taking, but that’s another geek story.
 
I miss school sometimes. I spent the first half of my life going right from high school to college to grad school. But in the end, it was too much. I burned out, stopped going to classes and in the end never finished my graduate degree. Even now, twenty years later (and how the hell did THAT happen?) just the thought of going back to school makes me nauseous. But I know it’s a possibility. My mother went back for her bachelor’s and master’s at my age and got her PhD at 60. I’ve got time.
 
It does make me envious of Emery, though. When we first met seven years ago, she was wrapping up an English major and planning to go to med school to become an ME. But she ended up dropping that idea for many of the same reasons I had with my advanced degree, and she went out to have some life experiences that included becoming a published author and moving to Philadelphia on the 4th of July (symbolic) and dropping a bed on my head. But now that original idea has reassearted itself with roaring ferocity and she has grabbed it with both hands to wrestle it into actuality. Just her study plan for the MCAT is a thing of beauty. I’m a little bit jealous that she has this great vision for herself and a little bit selfish that it’s going to mean she’ll have less time for me and our writing, but most of all I’m excited and eager and totally cheering her on (probably more than she wants me to).
 
She’s going to be magnificent.

Vacation on Cape Cod was not only relaxing but somewhat productive for Grey and I. After laying the groundwork for a new collection of novellas, we even started poking at one of them, which is more than we’ve done for a while. So, it seems, that sea air was good for something.

In other news, we sold a two novella collection to Amber Quill.  Watch My Back will include Under a Rock and Blood on the Mountain, coming out this fall. Under a Rock even has a shiny cover already.

Additionally, we’ve got two Creatures of Sin novels to revise and submit, and a Rule of Three book that may or may not ever see the light of day.

On the whole, though, I’d say we’re doing pretty well. Now if we could only get moving on any of our solo projects.

At long last, vacation has arrived. Well, almost. I’m about 95% packed and ready to go. Up to Grey’s tonight, her mom’s tomorrow, then Cape Cod from Sunday to next Friday. Always wanted to go there, but mainly it’s just going to be good to get away. Clear my head and come back to life refreshed.

Writing-wise, we’ve been cleaning up another pair of novels to submit. It’s always good to re-read and fall back in love with characters and stories you love. Aside from that, we have two Creatures stories to polish up and a last Rule of Three story to figure out whether or not we’re going to do anything with it. The Rule of Three/Arcana Ancien series just never took off and we’ve never been able to figure out quite what we’re doing wrong. We took blurbs and covers in a different direction, but that didn’t help at all, so que sera sera I suppose.

Of course, since we’re nearing the end of our backlog, it’s time to figure out what to do next. The Creatures ‘verse is pretty much told out, and Grey’s right that playing a female/female as a sideline probably wouldn’t work for our India Harper persona. So yeah. But we have many hours on the road in our near future which is always good for giving us new ideas. Fingers crossed.

The Pittsburgh Pirates were briefly first in the National League Central division this week.  They are having their best season in eighteen years.

The Monongahela Incline, a 635-foot inclined railroad track that carries riders 370 feet to the Mount Washington neighborhood overlooking downtown Pittsburgh, was shut down due to heat related electrical problem, but reopened Saturday afternoon.

 Odd little newsbites from the week for me to notice, especially since I don’t care about sports and don’t live in Pittsburgh.

 But our characters do.

All of our characters live in the real world, in space if not in actuality.  I’ve lived in and around Philadelphia for over twenty years, so I know exactly where Graeme, Diana and Peter’s homes are, where the nonexistent Schuylkill College stands (apologies to the kids and dogs whose park I stole for it), and even many of the restaurants and coffee shops that appear.  Even simple things like the cars that appear we do research on.  I just about blew out Emery’s ear with a squeal when the Masarati we had given our bad guy in the first Rule of Three book showed up on Top Gear.  Especially since it was PERFECT for the character.

 For our Creatures of Sin characters, the connection is a little more distant, but we do try our best.  We spent five days in Pittsburgh a couple of years ago for the Romantic Times conference and came to love the city.  We walked around the downtown area a lot, talked to locals about good restaurants and drove around a bit to get a taste of the town.  When we started writing David and Carver’s first story, I would have Google Maps open on the hybrid setting, zooming in on neighborhoods and comparing them to the descriptions on the Pittsburgh tourism webpages, finding the perfect places for homes and buildings.  I’ve memorized the pages for the Pittsburgh police department and familiarized myself with several of the college campuses.  We know the world Carver and David, Scotty and Chris and Kieran and Lucas all inhabit as though we lived there ourselves.

 The first rule of thumb for writers is to write what you know.  That is as true for setting as it is for plot.  Knowing the area you’re setting your story in gives your writing a level of detail you don’t have writing someplace you’ve never been.  And even if you haven’t been somewhere, you can fill in some of the knowledge with good research. 

 But it’s a great excuse for a road trip.

I lacked a witty subject line, so that’s what you all get.

Writing’s still a bit stalled, although Grey and I did do a bit of brainstorming this week. But we’re not too worried since we’ve got a big road trip at the end of the month and those are always our prime plotting time.

The heat finally broke for a few days here in Philly, so one actually wants to go outside and can sleep without the AC, with their windows open, and use covers. Of course, good sleeping weather means really not wanting to get out of bed in the morning, especially if one’s cat is being cuddly and the week has been ugh.

But it’s finally Friday, so yay!

Emery and I both follow a lot of sites and blogs every day.  For me it’s gardening and webcomics, for her it’s skeptics and information.  Some of our stuff overlaps, some is really of interest only to us, and some we share.  It’s a good way to keep the pumps primed, looking for new ideas or input for current ones (or, more aggravatingly, source material for stories we’ve either a) already completed or b) have given up on and don’t need encouragement).

Em checks Wikipedia every morning.  Today she tweeted “Wikipedia’s article of the day amused me. Oh, Doomsday, you would have been so much better without those last ten minutes. #doctorwho” and then followed it with “Sometimes a wall is a good place to end.”  The article in question is here.  For those of you who aren’t familiar and don’t want to bother reading the article, Doomsday was the last episode of the second series of the revived Doctor Who.  It’s a great story, full of action, adventure, romance, scary monsters, joyful reunions and one heartbreaking separation.  And that’s where it should have ended.  Unfortunately it didn’t.  Instead, the writer/show runner went for a mawkish, manipulative, overly sentimental half-reunion that ended in One Perfect Tear(tm), which for many of us spoiled the impact of the rest of the story.

But then, that’s always the challenge for any writer.  Knowing when to quit.  Whether it’s a term paper or a novel, you get to a point where you have to think, “Is this really adding anything?  Or am I just distracting from my main premise/thrust/emotion?”  Unfortunately, more often than not for novel writers, asking this question often means lopping off a couple thousand words at the end.  Emery and I have had to do this too many times to count.  But she’s absolutely right.  Sometimes a wall is a good place to end.