I think most creative people have these sort of days. Days where you’d rather vacuum up all the debris from the gerbil cage then face a paragraph (and I like my gerbils, they just tend to get bedding everywhere). You want to sit down and write, but oh look the laundry needs to be put away.

Not that I’m advocating totally neglecting your housework. It’s just easy to look for anything to do besides face the page. The internet is the other great distraction. For me, I frequently have a game of Spider Solitaire running in the background.

The hardest thing is just to do it. But, I think usually, once you do get going, once you do sit down and start putting words to page, then it becomes a little easier. And I just pulled up Spider Solitare instead of finishing out this entry. So… I’m gonna wrap this up, go put the laundry away and then sit down and write. My next First Line story won’t write itself.

Well, the agent said no, but that’s okay. I still got some positive feedback and really one of the nicest rejection letters I could have hoped to get. Now just need to move on and send out more. Oh and finish my next First Line story, next deadline is August 1.

Julnowrimo-Its like Nanowrimo, only less official, and in July. I don’t think I’m going to do it this year. I’ve tried in the past and I just can’t get into it like I can Nano. But still I thought you readers might be interest. Same general idea, 50,000 words in a month.

It started July 1, but there is still ample time to catch up. Anyone whose doing it, good luck!

Everyone has different ways of doing things. Some people write to music, some people can’t. Some people need to write in a crowded place, others perfer seclusion. Me, I need a little bit of distraction (hello internet) but I also need quiet. I can’t write to music with words, or else the words get mixed up in my head with what I’m trying to write. But I can write to instrumental music or music with words in a language I don’t understand. On the other hand too, I sometimes hear a song and think that it would go perfect with a scene. For some reason I’ve had this idea that if The Unthinkable was ever a movie then the closing song as the camera pans away should be “Solsbury Hill.”

Right now it is quiet, the only sound being some birds outside and the ceiling fan. Even the gerbils have stopped chewing on things and gone to sleep, quite adorably. So, I guess I’m off to write.

Remember how last week I said a friend basically forced me to send out a query last week? Remember how i’ve sort of been whining about getting frustrated? Yeah. That one query letter I did send got a postive response. I was asked for a few pages, which I sent. No garuntees anything wil come of it, but it’s nice to get something positive!

I’ve been writing a lot of background stuff lately for the Berger world. Not really anything that’s publishable, just stories. The little histories that make up people and the world they live in. Those family stories you tell with a laugh or maybe a sense of pride. Of course this is all fictional, but it’s good exercise to see how families interact and change over time.

Maybe I’ll go a completly different direction for nanowrimo this year and write some quiet domestic story instead of my usual action stuff. Of course even my most adrenaline fueled story is really about people.

It’s hard to explain without sounding half-crazy, but in my experience after you work with a character for a while they tend to take on a life of their own. So it might be interesting to just create a fairly normal family, add a pinch of drama and see if I can write it.