by Alexandra Sokoloff

I’m the only one here, right?   I can feel it.   Every single other person in the Universe is on vacation.    Hah.   That means I can say anything I want.

I’m working this weekend, but it feels like vacation when there’s no one around to bug me.   I love that.   I get my work and play in at the same time.

Okay, so here’s the problem.    I seem to be writing three books at once.   How did that happen?

I’m supposed to know better than that, aren’t I?   Wouldn’t I scathe a student up one side and down the other for not focusing on one project until it was done?

Well, I’m not exactly a student, though – and as a screenwriter I juggled multiple scripts at various stages of development all the time,  I had to, it’s just the job.

But books are different.    They’re so much bigger.   Can you really compare the two?

I think I know how this happened, actually. 

First, I’m in transition.     The Universe in its wisdom has decided to revamp every single aspect of my life in a major, bone-shattering way, and it’s been – special.      So it’s not all that surprising that all that upheaval from all directions would start to reflect itself in my writing life.

Second, I just turned in two projects, one right after the other, my paranormal that comes out this fall and a book I wrote with three fabulous other female authors, four interconnected novellas that make up an – apocalyptic – story of its own.   

And everything always looks different, disorienting, when you are finished, truly finished, with the immense task that writing a book is.

So it’s not so very surprising that I’m not entirely sure which of the three projects I was toying with - before I had to power down and finish these last two – I want to go back to, now.    I don’t even know who I am, anymore – how the hell am I supposed to know what I want to write?

Now, some of this is just rhetorical.   I KNOW which book I have to finish first.   That would be the one that’s almost finished, duh.    It’s unfortunate that I had to leave off on that one at the very worst possible time to leave a book – 3/4s of the way through a first draft, that Slough of Despond where you realize that you never had the slightest bit of talent to begin with, that in fact elves wrote your last four books, along with everything else you’ve ever written, and you might as well go do that other thing that you can’t do because no writer is really equipped to work at anything else, but you better figure something out fast, because your writing career is officially over.

I’m sure none of you has the slightest idea what I’m talking about.  

But yes, that’s where I was, and that’s what I had to face when I picked that book up again.    Sheer, unadulterated panic ensues.  

Now, as I tell my students, as writers we have to push through that section, it is not optional, because it’s exactly the emotional and physical predicament that our CHARACTERS are experiencing at that point of the story… when there is no possible solution to anything in front of them, or us, and we have to have that experience together to get to the final battle.   The process is cleverly, sadistically designed that way as part of the magic of storytelling.

And the truth is, I have hit this wall in every single script I’ve ever written, and all six novels, now, and I have always, every single time, gotten through it.    That’s a pretty damn good track record.  

But it still feels like dying, every single time.

And there are particular elements about this particular book that are making me more nervous even than usual.   First, I’m adapting my own short story as a novel.   So the gremlins are whispering:   This is a short story.   What ever made you think it could be a full length novel?   You’re stuck because THERE IS NO MORE TO WRITE.   Fool.

Also, it’s my first YA.   And it’s way too dark to be a YA.   Oh, I know, everyone says there’s no such thing as too dark for a YA anymore, but trust me, there is a limit, and I am it.

So that’s Book One.   I had 170 pages when I stopped.   Clearly need to finish that one first, but - see above.

Book Two is a huge departure for me.   Agent loves story.    Brilliant group of author friends love story.  It’s something I’ve been thinking of for years but finally figured out how to actually do it.    Okay, it’s a bit of a departure, urban fantasy, I guess is what I have to call it, and suspenseful, but not so dark as usual, but I was wanting to write something not so dark.    Started it back before I had to finish the last two projects and got 85 pages pretty fast.    Went to NY for BEA and researched locations, fabulous trip,  lots of ideas, should be able to jump right in, no problem, right?

Except that this is the first thing ever that I’m writing in first person.   What in hell made me want to do that?   I don’t even READ first person.    Add to that, it keeps feeling like it should be first person present tense.   Aaaaah!!     I am completely paralyzed.    Go back and rewrite it in third?    Push forward but switch to third?    Push forward and try first person present tense?     I’m not paralyzed, I’m comatose.

So, enter Book Three.    Book Three was an idea I was toying with at the same time I was thinking about doing Book Two.    More along my usual – very adult, very dark, half crime thriller, half supernatural, or maybe the characters are just crazy…   there is an emotional core to it that intrigued me, characters that felt already real, but Book Two felt like a Bigger Idea.

Only once I came up for air from the two just-finished projects, I couldn’t get Book Three out of my head.

And you know how it is about that book you left behind, especially when you are struggling with your current project.     I KNOW you know.    A few weeks ago Dusty called it “the bright and shinys”, but let’s be blunt.   It’s the ultimate forbidden fruit.    You know you should be committed to your relationship, and you are, really you are… but….

So I was just toying with it, really, a little harmless brainstorming on the side, and suddenly, WHAM!!!  That whole book is in my head.   Can’t stop thinking about it.    And Book of Shadows has just come out and I’m getting the reviews and the letters and realizing – oh my God, I really am writing a very specific thing and these people who are reading it are expecting that very specific thing – why on earth, when I’m just starting to hit my stride with my particular brand, would I want to suddenly jump track?

My readers would LOVE Book Three, it has everything that they say they read me for.

And it’s in third person.    Unless I make it first person.    Which I might.

So that’s where I am.    Utter chaos.   Confusion.    When I know – I KNOW – that the only possible way to maintain a career as an author, or any kind of writer, is to FINISH WHAT YOU START.

Well, but this last week, the smoke is starting to clear.   I think.   I’m not out of the woods yet, but I have been writing five pages a day on Book One.    Mind you, the book went off on a tangent that when I reread it might belong to a different universe entirely, but it was so fascinating I just had to go with it.    And I was able to remember, barely remember, but remember, that THE FIRST DRAFT IS ALWAYS GOING TO SUCK. It doesn’t have to make any sense.   Whole sequences can be thrown out.   My only job at this point is to get to The End.     Once I reach that happy place known as the Second Draft, I know I can make it happen.   I always do.

And you know what?    I think I needed to have the release of that illicit brainstorming on Book Three to break through my paralysis on Book One.   The utter absurdity of juggling three books took the pressure off all of them.   Maybe even Book One got jealous and stopped playing so hard to get when it felt like it was losing my attention.     Yes, that sounds completely insane, but can YOU explain how writing works?   I thought not.

So now I think I have a plan.   Five pages a day on Book One until The End, no excuses, and after that’s done I can do whatever I want on either of the other two for the rest of the writing day.   I can live with that.

And the moral of the story?     Well, it just goes to prove my number one and only rule of writing.  

WHATEVER WORKS.

Really.   Whatever gets it written, is gold.

So here's the question, if there's anyone here.   Have you ever cheated on one of your books?   How'd that work for you?   Humiliating disaster, or creative breakthrough?   Can you have multiple projects going, or are you a True Blue?

Hope everyone’s having a great holiday.   I know I am.

- Alex

PS:  If you’re looking for a little Independence Day spirit, and you haven’t seen it in a while, I just want to remind you of one of the best musical films ever made:  1776.    I think I might have to hunt that one down myself.

For God’s Sake, John, Sit Down!

  Molasses To Rum To Slaves



by Alexandra Sokoloff

I am (THANK YOU GOD, ANGELS, AND THE UNIVERSE) closing in on the end of my current book, my first paranormal, part of The Keepers trilogy coming out in the fall.  

This is the stage of a book in which I have no earthly interest in doing anything other than to just get the damn thing done.    Even though I am comfortably within my deadline, though not entirely of my own doing,  I am not doing much of anything these days but waking and working, pausing once during the day to go work out (because if I didn’t, I would kill people).   And falling into an exhausted sleep after, if not during.

Not that there isn’t a lot of procrastination going on within the day, but I really don’t WANT to do anything else – I don’t want to talk to anyone, I don’t want to watch movies or TV, I definitely don’t want to blog, I don’t want to go out to lunch or dinner or Superbowl parties (although I was thrilled  at the outcome).   The state of discomfort of being near the end of a book but not quite finished is so great to me that I would rather put everything else aside and push through to the end and pick up the pieces of whatever life I have left when it’s actually over and there is that feeling of relief so vast that you actually remember why you ever wanted to write in the first place.

But I find myself in an interesting dilemma, for maybe the first time in my professional writing life.

I don’t know what to write next.

That’s not entirely true – I am 3/4ths done with a YA I was writing at the same time that I was writing this paranormal, but I bailed on it around Christmas when I realized it was just too hard to be writing two books at the same stage of the writing process – that is, first draft, second half.   That’s the HARDEST stage of any book for me and I couldn’t handle doing two at that same stage.    So yes, I will go back and finish that book with some of this new “I finished the book!” energy.

Oh yeah, and also about the same time I was finishing my Screenwriting Tricks For Authors workbook.  (Um, the next time anyone hears me whining about not getting enough work done, can you just gently remind me…)

What I mean is, I don’t know what I’m writing after that YA, and that’s an issue, because as you know, or for those of you who don’t know, as I’m about to tell you, you always need to be at least a year ahead of publication, so I need to have another book in the pipeline for NEXT year.

Now the fact is, I have several complete proposals done.   Whole stories worked out.  Could bash out a screenplay on any number of them in six weeks, easily  - have done it a million times before.   (Well, dozens.)   Actually I have a whole first draft of a book done, too, but that I can’t go back to right now because it’s just too painful a reminder of a very painful year last year – I need more distance to finish that one sanely.

And I probably will write the books in those proposals one day.   Or I won’t.   I have so many books I am never going to be able to write.    But I know they’re not the right book right now.   At this stage of writing I can’t afford to be working on any book that isn’t the RIGHT book.

In the past I would have just jumped into one of those ideas, just decided and soldiered on.    I HATE the not knowing.    It is excruciating.   But we really have such limited time – as writers and on earth.   

And the truth is, I've had a cataclysmic year.  Profound changes.  I'm not the same person I was when I wrote those proposals.  I feel I need to start from where I am now - wherever that is, and I'm not even pretending that I know.

So as uncomfortable as I am about it, I am not jumping into the first thing that I think of, or the first thing that pleases me but that might not be a big enough book.    I am waiting. I am meditating.    I am reading randomly.   I am paying attention to dream images, songs, people, that catch my attention.    And I am taking my own writing advice.   I am making lists.

On my own blog, at the prompting of a reader, I have started a gargantuan series on “How to Write A Novel, From Start To Finish.”   (No, I never once said I wasn’t insane).

And I’m doing it for ME as much as anyone. 

I’ve already done four or five posts on just generating that perfect idea  - and I intend to do several more -  because this is a part of the writing process that people rarely spend enough time on, and is crucial if you want to develop a riveting book, even more crucial if you have any hope of being paid to write. You are going to spend two years of your life, minimum, on this book (and that's truly a minimum). 

So that brings us to the eternal question:   

How DO you get your ideas?

When people ask this of authors, many of us tend to clam up or worse, get sarcastic - because the only real answer to that is, “Where DON’T I get ideas?” or even more to the point, “How do I turn these ideas OFF?”

The thing is, “Where do you get your ideas?” is not the real question these people are asking. The real question is “How do you go from an idea to a coherent story line that holds up – and holds a reader’s interest - for 400 pages of a book?”

Or more concisely: “How do you come up with your PREMISES?”

We all have story ideas all the time. Even non-writers, and non-aspiring writers – I truly mean, EVERYONE, has story ideas all the time. Those story ideas are called daydreams, or fantasies, or often “Porn starring me and Edward Cullen, or me and Stringer Bell,” (or maybe both. Wrap your mind around that one for a second…)

But you see what I mean.

We all create stories in our own heads all the time, minimal as some of our – uh - plot lines may be.

A better question is “What’s a GOOD story idea?”

I see two essential ingredients:

a) What idea gets you excited enough to spend a year (or most likely more) of your life completely immersed in it –

and

b) Gets other people excited enough about it to buy it and read it and even maybe possibly make it into a movie or TV series with an amusement park ride spinoff and a Guess clothing line based on the story?

a) is good if you just want to write for yourself.

But b) is essential if you want to be a professional writer.

As many of you know, I’m all about learning by making lists. Because let’s face it – we have to trick ourselves into writing, every single day, and what could be simpler and more non-threatening than making a list? Anything to avoid the actual rest of it!

So here are two lists I encourage my workshop students to do to get those ideas flowing, which I am now doing for myself.

List # 1: Make a list of all your story ideas.
 
This is a great exercise because it gets your subconscious churning and invites it to choose what it truly wants to be working on. Your subconscious knows WAY more than you do about writing. None of us can do the kind of deep work that writing is all on our own. And with a little help from the Universe you could find yourself writing the next Harry Potter or Twilight.   That’s my plan, anyway.  

Also this exercise gives you an overall idea of what your THEMES are as a writer (and very likely the themes you have as a person). I absolutely believe that writers only have about six or seven themes that they’re dealing with over and over and over again. It’s my experience that your writing improves exponentially when you become more aware of the themes that you’re working with.

You may be amazed, looking over this list that you’ve generated, how much overlap there is in theme (and in central characters, hero/ines and villains, and dynamics between characters, and tone of endings).

You may even find that two of your story ideas, or a premise line plus a character from a totally different premise line, might combine to form a bigger, more exciting idea.

But in any case, you should have a much better idea at the end of the exercise of what turns you on as a writer, and what would sustain you emotionally over the long process of writing a novel.

Then just let that percolate for a while. Give yourself a little time for the right idea to take hold of you.  We all know what that feels like – it’s a little like falling in love.

List # 2: The Master List

The other list I always encourage my workshop students to do is a list of your ten (at least) favorite movies and books in the genre that you’re writing, or if you don’t have a premise yet, ten movies and books that you WISH you had written.

It’s good to compare and contrast your idea list with this IDEAL list.

So that’s another thing I’ve been doing again for myself.   Here’s part of it, in no particular order.

Rosemary’s Baby
Silence of the Lambs
Alice in Wonderland
The Haunting of Hill House (book and film)
The Shining (book and film)
Room with a View (film)
Withnail and I
A Wrinkle in Time
The Witching Hour
Pet Sematery
Hamlet
Arcadia
Rosencranz and Guildenstern Are Dead
The Fountainhead
Atlas Shrugged
Notorious
Vertigo
Suspicion
Rebecca (book and film)
Ten Little Indians/And Then There Were None
It (the book)
Bringing Up Baby
The Thin Man
The Little Foxes
The Children’s Hour
Pride and Prejudice
Bridget Jones’ Diary (book and film)
The Wire
Deadwood
Mad Men
I, Claudius
Fawlty Towers
Rome
Philadelphia Story
It’s A Wonderful Life
Groundhog Day
The Breakfast Club
Poltergeist
The Stand (book)
Carrie (book and film)

I included my favorite TV, and I could go into musicals, too, but I’ll spare you. Well, except I have to mention Sweeny Todd. And Phantom of the Opera. And Chicago. And…

And on the myth and fairy tale front:

Ariadne (Theseus and the Minotaur)
East of the Sun and West of the Moon
Eros and Psyche
Beauty and the Beast (all three of those last are the same story, essentially).
The Handless Maiden
The Yellow Dwarf
1001 Nights
Sleeping Beauty

Now, that’s a BIG list, of all-time favorites that I see/read over and over and over again, and it doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface.  And on the surface, it seems to have a lot of disparate genres there. But there are underlying commonalities that are very specific to my own taste (and I’m the only one who can truly say what those are, just as you are the only one who can say what your emotional preferences are).

What do I see about that list?

Dark dark dark dark dark…. Except for the romantic comedies and swoony Room With A View.

Lots of horror, but more psychological than gory. Lots of psychological thrillers. Some adventure fantasy and fantasy fantasy. The Stoppard is about trippy extra-dimensional occurrences, plus he’s a genius. Actually that goes for Shakespeare, too, extra-dimensionally. Lots of psychology - the Lillian Hellman plays are dramas, but very dark ones that explore ordinary and completely chilling human evil. I especially like human evil so big it seems almost supernatural (as in Silence of the Lambs and Rebecca). Withnail and I is a flat-out drug movie, and has the British comedy of chaos I so love in Fawlty Towers. Lots of sex, or at least, the sex is part of what I love about a lot of those choices. (The Wire and Deadwood, for example…). Lots of Cary Grant. Oh, right, that would be sex.

What are some of the themes and subthemes of these stories? (For me, personally, I mean, and not trying to be too analytical about it – just spewing:)

Good vs. evil (and good usually triumphing, ambiguously). Inability to distinguish the supernatural from reality. Inter-dimensionality. Erotic tension. Loss of control (and that absolutely includes the comedies on there – Fawlty Towers, Bringing Up Baby, Withnail and I, are complete rollercoaster rides of hysteria.) What is reality? Man Must Not Meddle. The deal with the devil. What it means to be a hero or heroine. Unlikely heroes and heroines. Coming to terms (or not) with one’s extraordinary gifts. Disparate people uniting to accomplish something as a team. A man and a woman who don’t trust each other having to work together, discovering they are divinely matched.

And even more importantly, what FEELING am I looking for when I read and watch these stories? What EXPERIENCE am I looking for? Again, this may be the most important indicator of what genre you’re writing in.

I like a lot of sensation in my stories. That is, I want a story to make me experience a lot of sensation. And not easy, light, fun sensations either, for the most part. Fear, thrills, doubt, sex, urgency, loss of control, violent surprise. I love the overwhelming feeling of having something huge, possibly supernatural, going on around me (in the form of the characters I’m projecting myself onto). Something evil, even, but so powerful and mesmerizing I have to explore it, understand it. And that can be a situation, as in Rosemary’s Baby or The Shining, or a person, as in The Children’s Hour. I want a sense of cosmic wonder. I want a sense that good does conquer evil, that good people can make a difference, but without sugar coating. I like a lot of game playing, matching wits (Philadelphia Story, Thin Man, Silence of the Lambs).

So, what I write is psychological horror, or supernatural thriller, or supernatural mystery, or psychological thrillers with an extra-dimensional twist. And while that sometimes makes my books frustratingly hard to categorize (in libraries, for example…) it also has branded me in a way that has been useful to me as an author, and that I’m pretty obligated to stick with now.    Let’s face it – I’m not going to suddenly resurrect the chick lit genre.   And in a happy non-coincidence, what I’m looking for in a book is what my readers read my books for, or so they tell me.  

So this week as I make my lists (and finish that damn book), I am concentrating on the FEELING of my next book, and letting the details come as they will.

I hope.

Authors, my question for the day is - What are you trying to make your reader or audience FEEL? Horror? Thrills? The glow of romance? The adrenaline and exhilaration of adventure?

And readers, what are you hoping a book will make you feel?

- Alex

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PS.  The Price was released in the UK this week, from Little, Brown:

 

Buy it here...

 

 



by Alexandra Sokoloff

You all get more tour journal today because tour is ALL I’ve been doing, since - I can’t even calculate since when.  I don’t even remember what it’s like to write, by now, which scares me, oh, just a little.   This is the last day of traveling, though, at least until one big week at the end of the month, but apart from some cool publicity with that, that week is going to be just about writing, MY writing.

Whatever that is.

My last stint has been teaching Screenwriting Tricks For Authors on a beach in Charleston - an incredible week long retreat for writers and aspiring writers sponsored every year by the Lowcountry Romance Writers.  It's all women except for one man, who is taking those odds very much in stride, and the focus is paranormal, historical romance, and romantic suspense, although to my delight there is one horror chick so I don’t feel like the complete voice of doom.

I had a fabulous drive from Raleigh to Charleston, nice to be on the road again.  The great thing about driving toward South Carolina is that you get all that beach music, which I never knew it was its own genre of music until I actually lived in the South, and then I could see it in EVERYTHING - the Spinners and Temptations and Marvin Gaye and everyone. 

I got to the bridge over to the island where our retreat house is, just at sunset - WOW.  I drove straight out to the beach strip and pulled into this - incredible - mansion.   To say it is luxe is the understatement of the year.  Exquisite.  Cherrywood floors, and three levels of absolute perfection, elevator accessible of course -  but in a very beach, livable way - there's a lot of Southwest influence, which is where the family of owners is from.   This porch that I'm out on now, or terrace or whatever you call it in the South, has multiple living areas, with fireplaces of course, and the ocean is right there, in front of me (past the pool and volleyball court, naturally) and  that SOUND, and the air -  I'm just in a tank top and I'm fine, and this incredible fragrance - it's not jasmine, but something sweet and completely intoxicating, and there are turtles, apparently, out there in the sand doing their thing in a way that is so protected that you can be arrested for turning on porch or pool lights after sunset.

And my room.   Well, the word is suite.   With sweeping ocean view, entertainment center and kitchen, and spa bath.   Yes, I could get used to this.

I truly believe that anyone who commits to this kind of week-long writing intensive, at the prices that get charged for them, is ready to move to another, professional level, and I've never been disappointed in the calibre of students.  

We had a fantastic dinner and got to know each other a bit, and out of 25 people about half are either psychiatric professionals or law enforcement or social welfare.    Unbelievable stories at dinner, I'm so psyched to be here - as usual, I'm going to learn every bit as much and more as the students.

-----

Funny, here, how it’s incredibly cloudy, layered and stormy and brooding and you look away for a second and when you look back the whole sky has gone dazzlingly sunny, just the slightest wisps of clouds.   I have noticed, oh man, have I, how Southern temperaments are just like that weather.   Violent moods and storms that shake the earth and are forgotten in the next minute.   Not what I’m used to.

It’s another warm day but not so humid, easier.    I’m on the terrace again (and that sweet smell is jasmine, I found the vines) and I am noticing that in the overgrown yard next door there is a swing set, rusting, covered in brambles.   Tragic.   It would be lovely to swing and look out over the ocean.   But an overgrown swing set is a good image…

Romance conferences are great - for many reasons, but what I’m thinking of specifically right now is the swag.   Authors who can’t come contribute these extravagant giveaways for the swag bags – lush beauty products, flavored condoms, chocolate lip gloss, chocolate cock suckers (chocolate, chocolate, women and chocolate – someone’s in the kitchen right now making double chocolate biscotti).  Once in a while there’s even a mini-vibrator.   I used the body lotion from my bag and now, in the sun, my whole skin is sparkling with tiny iridescent flakes – the label on the bottle says it’s mica.  It’s making me feel like a mermaid or something.

People here are great.   The entire house is now vibrating with deep creativity.   Four of us who just had their periods have started them again from all the free-floating estrogen, just like in college.   Everyone is so excited.    And for me there is nothing like being able to draw a fantastic plot line out of a beginning writer – who up until that second didn’t even think she could do it.   I tell people:   “You would not have had the idea if you were not capable of executing it.”    (Something I am always fervently hoping for myself…)

Whether they do execute it or not, you never know – that’s more about endurance and a certain ruthlessness than about talent.   But I have been privileged and proud to see people I taught show up at a conference a year later with book deals – NOT saying I did it, but that I could see that it would happen, and told them so.

 

---PM-----

 

I taught my class again today and people are now constantly laughing out loud in surprise when they saw how brilliantly formulaic film structure is and how much easier their lives are going to be from now on, knowing a few simple tricks.  

And my horror chick is a real author.   One of those that I wouldn’t dare give notes to, she is so dead on about what she’s doing.  Naturally the most nervous one here, almost fainted before she had to read, and the most surprised that what she’s written is what it is.   And it is so great and logical and right that the Universe has put her here because I’m one of the few women out there writing what she’s writing and I will be able to save her about a year of grief  and possible disaster when it comes time to get an agent, the right agent, and between me and my other dark female author friends we can help her navigate what’s going to be her new life.    

(And this happens over and over and over again at these workshops and conferences – for authors, for aspiring authors, for me personally.   If you do it, the Universe understands that you’re serious about your writing and lifts you to the next step in a way you could never do for yourself.)

She’s one of the ones I bonded with last night, staying up way too late watching an excruciatingly bad horror movie called Orphan.   But finally there was a plot twist so sublimely ludicrous we were screaming, laughing – worth ever single minute we wasted with the rest of the movie.

Sunset was about three hours long, wave after wave of color crashing over the clouds, with a full moon on top of that, and dinner was Fettuccini Alfredo, from scratch.

No.   It doesn’t suck.

 

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Things I love about this place.

- The spiral staircase, going up three floors, that polished, cherry wood…

- The elephant tapestries on the second floor.   Ganesh, god of happiness.

- The knockout 180 view of the ocean you get walking through the archway into the living room.

- The theme of palms – I’ve always loved that as a design element anyway, and I was in THE palm room, they were on everything, pillows, pictures, shower tiles, ceiling fan. Just like the Atlantic ocean is a softer ocean than the Pacific, these are softer palms than California palms, feathery and feminine.

- That sea foam.   Didn’t Venus come from sea foam – the sperm of Zeus?  Never got how of course the Greeks would think that, before this trip.   Totally fitting for a romance retreat.

- Omg, the food.   As anyone who has read this blog for a while has no doubt noticed I am NOT a foodie but we have had some spectacular meals -  one night crab legs and oysters, which were cracked and fed to us by the Charlestonians – this beautiful auburn-haired lithe elegant woman named Kathy, with the sexiest, butteriest accent – standing in front of me with a knife and opening oysters for me – full well knowing the picture she was creating and the primal pleasure of it all…

- And sparkly Lisa from Florida, who owns an apparently quite famous bakery/café in St. Augustine, the Cookery, made a five course Hungarian feast:  sweet beets with sour cream, flat herbed egg noodles for goulash, this incredible sour cream and dill cucumber salad, green beans.   And homemade, soft granola in the morning… ummm….

- The surfers.   It cracks me up to see surfers trying to surf the baby waves here, but some of these guys were actually catching some rides…. Mystifying.   Looked great in the wetsuits, too.

- The butterflies – so many of them, little animas, everywhere, fluttering right in front of our faces, fearless: bright yellow ones and tiger-striped.

- The company of women.   The comfort level - open, loving, supportive, sexy, giggly, earthy, hilarious.

 

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As you can probably tell, I had a cosmically wonderful time, and got some seriously good teaching done.

And yet I kept getting these anxiety – not attacks, but prickles, that I was not getting any of my own work done, that any time I had a free moment, not that there were many, I’d walk on the beach or get talked into another horror movie marathon or just sit on the porch baking in the sun and staring out at the ocean.

Why do we do that to ourselves?  

I’ve been touring NON-STOP for over a month now, because of the Halloween thing and because The Harrowing came out in the U.K. in September.   It was a total, Universal gift to have a week on the beach, in such overwhelmingly beautiful circumstances.  I wasn’t slacking, I was teaching, and yet I was beating myself up that I had gotten no further on deciding my next book (that would be after the next TWO that I’m writing at the moment).

Is there not something a little crazy about that?

Well, finally I relaxed and decided I was just going to take the gift.   And maybe instead of forcing a decision on my next book, I will just listen, and see what I might be being told to write, if I just manage to stay quiet enough to hear.

So that’s my message today.   We’re given all these gifts, all the time.   Life is so abundant, and a writer’s life seemingly even more so – just magic things, all the time.   Do you take the gifts you’re given?    Doesn’t it work better that way?