The week before long/holiday weekends always drag.  Everyone slips into vacation mode and no one wants to work.  But five o’clock will roll around eventually and then it’s three days of blissful nothing.  Save my cat waking me up at an obscene hour to be fed.

In the writing arena, Grey and I submitted the third Creatures book and are forging ahead at a fairly good pace on the fourth Creatures book.  Even better the plot may have found us instead of vise versa.  It’s always nice when it works out like that.

Solo-wise, we’re both still in holding patterns.  I started picking at my second Landa book, but that petered out.  At least I think I finally figured out what’s wrong with my languishing, frequently restarted WIPs—no First Plot Point.  Completely new concept (to me) that I happened across in my blog feeds.  Essentially it’s that little something something that kicks everything into motion.  My published books have easily identifiable FPPs, and their languishing sequels don’t.  In other words, it’s a new means of productive procrastination.

As for this weekend, Grey might be taking her kids to the Shore, and I’m taking it easy with my cat and enjoying the quiet of Philly on a summery long weekend.

WE’RE WRITING!

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the dam has burst and the words are flowing like… Well, okay, no. The dam has cracked and we’re getting words on page for the next Creatures of Sin book. It’s not going quickly, although we did get two and a half chapters done this week, and I foresee a plot roadblock looming in the future, but our rule of thumb is to just write until we can’t and then beat on it until we can again. The important thing was *starting*. Which is true of anything, really. Until you start, you can’t know what the challenges are going to be, what needs to be surmounted, what new discoveries you’ll make. When I was learning to drive school bus, we were taught that you can’t steer unless you’re moving. I think that’s true of writing, too. So now we’re moving. No more whining about not writing! At least for a little while…

In the meantime, we’ve got the third CoS book ready to send off to Amber Quill (if I ever get around to working on the blurbs for it) and there’s a short story in our queue vegetating before we submit that as well. So it’s not all grim. And Emery has new body art and I’m going strawberry picking this weekend. Lots of opportunities for inspiration!

No new writing yet, but Grey and I have been brainstorming on our next Creatures book while polishing up the third book to send off to Amber Quill.  That’s progress, right?  We’re also trying to resurrect one of our languishing WIPs; unfortunately, works been a bear this week and sort of put a damper on that, at least from my end.

I can’t say I haven’t been writing.  Between the end of last week and the first part of this week I did a couple thousand words…on fanfiction.  I’m actually more than pleased with the results, and it was the first time in awhile that I got that good writing buzz.  I’ve missed that immensely.  It would have been nice if it were on one of my original WIPs, but writing is writing and when it feels so damned good it doesn’t matter to me what form it takes.  Do I feel a bit guilty for neglecting my own characters?  Of course.  Then again, not really.  Have I mentioned how good I felt after?  I’m talking word flying across the page with that kind of magic that only hits so often and leaves you in desperate need a of cigarette after, whether you smoke or not.  Like my solo blog says, good writing gets me off.

Other than that, Grey is turning into quite the gardening pro and has taken up spinning in addition to being a kick ass knitter.  As for myself, I’m stumbling through new dance steps and enjoying every moment.  And yes, I’m going to the Friday social party at the dance studio because a) I don’t want my instructor to yell at me again, and b) it really is good for me to get out of the house (even if I do still prefer to curl up in front of the computer and poke the internets/watch old Murder, She Wrote eps, etc.).

Aside from that, it’s finally Friday.  Halle-frickin’-lujah.

There has once again been much tearing of hair and rending of cloth over another tirade against the evils of fanfiction.  Others have responded much wittier and wiser than I could.  But let me be perfectly clear on one thing, and I speak for Emery on this as well:

I AM A FAN WRITER.

Most writers are.  For a lot of us, the words started coming before we knew what to do with them.  For me, it was Star Wars.  The Empire Strikes Back came out in 1980, and I was obsessed.  I had to FIX it.  Han couldn’t stay locked in that block forever, not when he’d just told the princess he loved her!  (Sort of.  At thirteen, I found it very romantic.)  So I did.  I wrote the whole first half hour of Return of the Jedi.  I’m not kidding.  It scares me how many of the details I had actually turned up in the movie, right down to Han’s carbonite sickness.  I take it less as a credit to my storytelling skills and chalk it up more to George writing like a thirteen year old girl, which the later series proved out.  But it didn’t matter.  I was writing.

Once the words started coming out, there really was no stopping it.  I did Doctor Who fic and Star Trek fic.  (This was before there was a need for TOS tags.  There *was* only one series.)  I had my first real editing experience on a Remington Steele story I wrote.  Back in those days, if you wrote fanfic and wanted it published, you actually submitted it, dealt with acceptance and rejection letters, and if accepted, went through a full editorial process.  I was fortunate at seventeen to get a good, serious editor who worked with me and taught me a lot, more than any of the creative writing classes I had later.  After three rounds of revision where the manuscript came back soaked in red ink every time, when the finished product finally came out and I held it in my hands, I felt like a real author.

Grad school crushed the creative spirit out of me right when I was trying to make the jump to pro writing.  It was almost ten years before I took up writing again, and again it was for fan writing, this time in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer universe.  And again, I learned a lot from the process.  It was through Buffy that I met Emery, and for both of us it was in the Buffyverse that we began developing as erotic romance writers.  Giles/Ethan fic was the first M/M I ever enjoyed, because the ship made sense to me, unlike others in other fandoms that seemed forced on the characters.  And by exploring those kinds of relationships, ones that were realistic and complicated and less than fairy tale, I started developing my own voice for writing characters like David and Carver and Peter and Graham and even Diana, bless her inconvenient boobage.

Most writing advice gives the first and foremost advice for a learning writer is to WRITE.  Write anything.  Write blog posts, write letters, write grocery lists, WRITE ANYTHING.  And that includes fan fiction.  It’s easy to write what you love, and that makes it easier to write when it’s hard.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some Ashes to Ashes fic to work on.