As the Muse Turns

Ahh... last summer, I thought my muse (I really should name her, seeing as how she lives to make me crazy) left. Gone. Kaput. Bye-bye.

Apparently, I was wrong.

Not only is she back, but she's trying to make up for lost time.

I finished the rough draft to Dance with the Devil last week. I finished the first round of revisions for Tiger Eyes last Friday. Swore I was taking a break. Not writing anything for a while yet.

Yeah.

Right.

On Saturday, I was typing the words Chapter One for a new idea. A wonderful, warm-and-fuzzy inspiration that came to me late Friday night and would not leave me alone until I got the words on paper - er - on file.

Trouble is, the beginning isn't working.

I can't find it.

I've rewritten the same five pages about a dozen times, trying to figure out where the story starts. Still haven't had much luck. The first love scene was already written in my head, so I wrote the rough draft of that instead.

What appeared on the screen was a little different. Not a full-fledged love scene. But the lead-up. A teaser, if you will.

Okay. Now, if only the beginning would come to me.

Rats.

So, I still don't have it written, but that's okay. I've been busy running errands and since the Boy's school program wrapped up last week, my writing time's been cut into during the day. The flip side is that now I can stay up a little later at night to write, since I don't have to be up first thing in the AM.

But still no beginning.

Sigh.

I'll just let it simmer in the back of my mind. My muse has also planted ideas for two more stories, but she's not being quite so pushy about them just yet. At least she's a bit considerate, especially considering how she ditched me last summer.

A muse with a guilty conscience is not necessarily a good thing.

But, it's still better than an absentee muse, that's for sure.

Lookin' Up

Whoops! I started this post yesterday, but then got distracted and, what do you know? I kind of forgot about it. Sorry about that.

So, it's gray and rainy here. It's been gray and rainy since.... May, I think. I hate this weather because it makes me feel all gray and rainy and crabby and all that other fun, happy nonsense.

On the other hand, being forced to remain inside has been good for my muse. She is happily humming along in the background, whispering story ideas and plot points for stories that I thought were going to die a slow, lingering death on my hard drive. Yay for the muse!

Okay, yes, Angel of Darkness is still kind of stalled. I managed to write another 1000 words, but I'll probably end up taking them back out. Still, it's better than nothing, right? I think there are too many love scenes (Gabriel and Regan are wiped out, I tells ya!), and I need to go back and flesh out some earlier details. Then I can write the ending and put it away for a while. Whew... It's almost like giving birth. Almost.

Tiger Eyes is back up and running. Now that I've pretty much thrown out the outline for it, it's been easier to get the story out. The only trouble I've run into is forgetting little details that took place earlier in the story, and being the genius that I am, I neglected to write down. But that's hardly a big deal, really. It just means I have to flip through the printout. I'm trying hard not to edit as I go, since I just want to get the first draft finished, but sometimes it's very difficult to resist. It's kind of funny, as I was looking through the original outline, you should only know how many **facepalms** there were. It's amazing, really, how something I thought was brilliant (okay, maybe not exactly brilliant, but I thought it was good at the time) becomes so utterly stupid a few months later. What the hell was I thinking?!?! has gone through my mind more than once. So, the outline goes completely. And the story is cruising along on it's own. Outline? I don't need no stupid, stinkin' outline!

So, that's that - things are lookin' up, writing-wise. I've got plenty to keep me busy, probably for the better part of the summer. And that's always a good thing!

Work(s) In Progress

Too many works in progress, that is.

That's the funny thing about writing (at least for me) - when I finish a book, I have this momentary feeling of panic. What if that's it? What if I never have a decent idea ever again? I haven't, however, ever thought - I've just got too many ideas!

Until now.

It started with NaNoWriMo. That sitting down and getting x amount of words out per day unlocked something very dangerous inside my head.

My Muse.

So, now I've got (as you can see on the sidebar there) four works in progress, and one in its final (and this time, I mean it) revision to go back to my editor in a few weeks.

Four.

Four frickin' books that need revising. And that's not counting the one ero-rom I've been working on (off and on, anyway) for the last year. Nor is it counting the new idea that clobbered me at the end of NaNo.

It's crazy. How did it happen and how the heck am I going to get them all off my desk in the next year months? And I will have them to my editor(s) within the next year or so. Which means that the newest story will have to wait. And that's okay. I still have plenty of research to do on it as well, so there's no real rush.

So the next time I even think about worrying about whether or not I'll ever have another new idea, I'll redirect myself back to this post. And that should cure the worries right straight!

I'm also working on a new list of blog topics - I have a few, but I need more - and I am soooo open to suggestions so let's hear them, mmmkay?

I Must Be Mad!

Okay, so I finished up my NaNo book on what? Monday? Tuesday? Yikes, I can't remember. But it was earlier this week and I don't feel like scrolling through the pathetically few posts here to find out exactly when. Either way, it was a lot of writing - in an insanely short amount of time.

Now, I think it will be a viable book, eventually. But I'm not going to even look at it until probably January at the earliest. I've got two other projects in front of it. One is Devil in Disguise, which is thisclose to being done. The other is a category-length contemporary that I wrote last spring, and has undergone several revisions. I'll finalize that before the end of the year (hopefully) and have it out the door by January as well.

So, that's enough to keep me busy, right (read: keep me out of trouble)

You'd think so.

But I've found out something very important about myself this week.

I'm crazy.

Looney.

Mad as a freakin' hatter.

Another story idea has popped into my head and it's poking me somewhere right behind my eyes.

Last March, when You Belong to Me came out, I'd originally planned several novels around the Radcliffe family (Tony Radcliffe being the hero in Belong) - around Tony and Brenna's children (only one actually existed at the end of the first book.) The problem was, I had characters but no story.

Well, I think I might have one. Maybe more than one.

NO!!!!!!!

Ack, I didn't want to begin a new project now, so I'm trying to just kind of stuff my muse into the corner. Jeez, she goes on an extended coffee break during the last 10k words of my NaNo novel and now she's sucking up to me - I can't win.

So, I think I'll be at least jotting down the basic plot. I really don't want to begin anything new yet. I've got enough going on as it is. Stupid muse.

No, wait. I take that back.

Make nice to the muse. The muse is your friend.

Yeah. That's it.

The muse is my friend.

**sigh**

I'm doomed.