Started off the week sort of right by doing revisions on the third Creatures of Sin book, hoping that it might inspire writing by rediscovering characters and a story I love.  Nope.  Still love everything about that world that Grey and I created, but nothing new came to life.  Stupid muse.

So Grey and I decided to revisit our fanfic roots a bit and issued mini writing challenges to each other.  Which has sort of stoked the fires of creativity and reminded both of us that, yeah, writing is fun and we do love it.  When writing professionally, it’s so easy to get caught up in all the brouhaha and talk yourself into a corner of no productivity or joy in your craft anymore.  And this is why, time and again, I tell people that I could never do writing for a living.  It’s not that writing isn’t the passion of my life, but I know how I operate.  If my fun becomes work, then I stop doing that.  Hopefully this little back and forth Grey and I have going this week will help both of us reclaim the fun.

In other news, Grey’s gardening bug has sort of bit me.  Last week I visited her in the ‘burbs to help her mix dirt and take some home for myself to try a bit of small scale gardening.  I’m starting simple.  Cat grass for my cat.  Not exciting, and yet…it kind of is.  Wednesday night it was still just a pot of dirt with seeds somewhere in it.  Then I looked last night and there were green spiky things shooting up.  I can make things grow!  Just have to remember to regularly water said growing things so they don’t, you know, die.

And of course, ballroom dance lessons are another bright spot in the week.  I’m gradually picking things up.  I just wish my lower heels would get here.  My high-heels are sexy and danceable, but my toes will be happier when my heels get a little closer to the ground.

Writing is hard.  If you’ve been reading this blog lately, you know that’s too true.  It probably sounds like we’re doing a lot of whining about that, how much we *aren’t* writing.  Trust me, we hate that as much as you probably (hopefully?) do.  But just because we aren’t writing doesn’t mean we aren’t trying to write.  And sometimes that’s enough.  Emery’s Lazy-Ass Writing Goal is on hold, as even that small amount of writing has been generating more dread than inspiration.  The first rule of writing is that no matter how hard it is, when it starts making you nauseous, stop.  Forcing it is a good way to kill the love.

Our attempts at the moment are more about refilling the tanks rather than putting words on paper.  In the course of writing, you tend to forget that you need to feed your muse/imagination/what have you.  New experiences, new words fill you up and convert into the energy to write.  So that’s where we’re at.  Emery has started taking dance lessons, and brings home wonderful stories of her Russian teacher, Nodari and seems to be developing a joy in her body again.  I am gardening.  Getting my hands dirty and making something else grow is healing, reconnecting me with the physical world when I spend so much time in the mental.  I had a surprise guest in the garden last night, a little baby rabbit hiding behind my tomato bed, which just reinforced that growing veggies is a good thing.  Next weekend is the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival, which I’m looking forward to.  Lots of pretty yarns and a chance I might bring home some new family friends.  I’ve been thinking about rabbits for a long time.  Now might be the time.

Growing, making, nurturing.  It may seem like avoidance, but it all feeds the creative spirit until we’re ready to grow more stories.

I finally got sick of not writing this week and decide it was high time to force myself back into the habit.  But I wanted to keep the pressure low.  Instead of aiming for my normal daily goal of 1000 words, I nudged it down to a more reasonable 100.  Even on a horrible, uninspired day I know I can string a measly hundred words together.  I’ll admit that on some days that small amount can be every bit as impossible seeming as 10,000 words.  Still, you have to start somewhere.

The first week has gone pretty good, but first week usually does with my “new” writing regimens.  As does the second week, mostly, though that’s where it tends to fall apart and my procrastination, slacking self rears her vicious head.  I do think, however, that with such a tiny daily goal I might stand a chance of sticking with this.  Ha ha ha ha ha.

It’s also spurred Grey into action on her solo stuff.  She wrote an opening that has me salivating for more.  As she so frequently does with me, I keep pestering her for the rest of the book now.  All’s fair after all.

Hopefully with the Lazy Ass Writing Goal (LAWG, for short, and no hyphen as I am lazy), will help us get our confidence back and be able to tackle our languishing but promising WIPs.

I was laying in bed Monday morning, pretending it wasn’t really Monday morning and that I didn’t have to get up to go to the day job again. Morning Edition was playing on the clock radio that I was studiously ignoring when Lynne Neary did a report on people who were ordering the new Girl Who book from overseas rather than waiting for it to be released here in the US, a good eight months after it had come out in Europe. Knopf took a chance, not realizing how popular the books would be, and staggered the release, hoping to build interest in the books. Except they took off, so instead of the extra time building interest in the series, it became an interminable and ultimately unnecessary wait. People started ordering the books from UK and European distributors or just picking them up when they were overseas. Knopf was shocked and horrified. They forced US bookstores who were ordering the books for their customers to stop immediately, and the publicity director actually encouraged people to buy only from US dealers and internet firms, to obey the law.

Except in this global age, that just ain’t going to fly.

It’s not like this is the first time this has happened. Scholastic got burned exactly the same way with the Harry Potter series. When Goblet of Fire came out in the UK months before it did here, kids and parents did the logical thing and hit Amazon UK. In the end, the lost sales were probably a drop in the bucket, but Scholastic learned their lesson and released the rest of the series simultaneously. Knopf failed to realize that in trying to generate interest, they might actually get interest, and wasn’t prepared to adjust to the new demand. Although the “building interest” philosophy is very old school publishing, and doesn’t take into consideration the new reality of blogging, tweeting and otherwise instantaneously sharing information. Buzz that once took months to build now takes days. Eight months might as well be eight years.

Another article later in the week on All Things Considered tied right into Knopf’s demand that people “obey the law”. In a piece on setting rules for kids, a psychologist from UC Berkeley lays out four categories of rules: moral rules, safety rules, social rules and personal rules. Personal rules are rules that kids consider to be about their personal business: who they hang out with, what they wear, what music they listen to, and almost all conflicts between parents and kids come from this area. The kids find these rules to be unfair and so don’t comply. Which is something we as grownups do as well. We decide what laws are fair and unfair every day and act accordingly, driving 70 in a 55 zone, downloading a song or TV show illegally when we already have or intend to buy the legal version, fudging a deduction on our taxes. And the idea that we can’t have a book that people have had in Europe for months is inherently unfair, and there is no way Knopf will get compliance with it.

I feel for print publishers, I really do. They are still functioning on a nineteenth century model when the reading public is hurtling through the twenty-first. Between globalization and the digital revolution, their old methods and functions don’t work anymore. Rather than catching up, though, rather than innovating and reinventing, they are trying to hold us the readers to the old rules. But that genie is out of the bottle, and there’s no way they can stuff us back in.

My mom’s out visiting, along with my aunt and uncle, so while I’m out playing tourist and traveling hither and yon with them and my cousin, poor Grey has been toiling away at her nine to five.  Which means that not much writing has gotten done on either of our parts.  Although, I believe she’s got the outline for a fantastic solo story that I’ll leave to her to tell you about.  And while I haven’t written anything, I do have another new idea niggling at the back of my brain.  One of the many family field trips was to DC and the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum.  There was an exhibit on the flying aspects of WWI, romantic visions vs. reality.  And I”m all about WWI–added four more books to my collection of WWI histories.  Maybe this time I’ll actually put all that information to use in a book, instead of glossing it over like I did in Modus Vivendi.

With any luck, I’ll be rejuvenated and raring to go once next week rolls around.  Back to the grindstone in more ways that one.  I know Grey’s going to be happy when I get my writing jones back and stop giving her lackluster responses to some pretty amazing ideas.