Whirlwind weekend
This weekend was action packed for us. We finished the outside decorations, and I’m a bit scared because my hubby has been bitten by the decorating bug. Give him a couple years, and our house will be visible from space 🙂
Saturday night was my hubby’s staff party, and the whole group of us went curling. I used to be into that pretty heavily (just as serious as ball, but I think I was even better at curling), but since my knee surgeries it’s not very comfortable for me. The last time I played was a year before I got pregnant with my first born, so it’s been a while since I’ve been on the ice. We all had a pretty good time though, and the newbies stopped making fun of the sport real fast. It’s way harder than it looks, trust me!
Yesterday I hosted our Vancouver RWA chapter Christmas party, and had a great time. The house was all sparkly and smelling like homemade mulled cider, and hosting a big group like that always makes it feel more like the holidays. Our meetings don’t leave a whole lot of time for socializing, so it was nice to mingle with everyone and talk about the writing industry from people “in the know”.
Bad news is I burned the back of my left hand late last week. I was pulling the lid off my potroast in the oven and the steam got three of my fingers and my knuckles. I yelped and let out some choice words that had my little guys running into the kitchen with wide eyes, and I kept expecting the skin to bubble and peel off right then. I rarely (if ever) drink, but I’m telling you I was eyeing the rum in the pantry pretty closely. The pain was unreal. I didn’t sleep much that night, and the next morning I thought my hand would look like a piece of blackened meat but it was just kind of mottled and swollen. Jeez, did I feel like a wimp. No bleeding, no blisters, nada. Of course, there is now. The burns are kind of a rusty red color and itching like crazy now that the skin is getting ready to peel away. And I’ve got a patient tomorrow night booked for an hour treatment. Should be interesting!
On the plus side, I’ve now got the final pesky plot details worked out, so now I can finish off my draft of Turbulence. Good critique partners are a godsend, I tell ya!
It’s a Small World
Connections are strange and wonderful things sometimes. For instance, my current project features female aviators and Pararescue Jumpers, and the book is set in Afghanistan. Books and Internet research are great starting points, but I wanted to go a step further and talk to people who have walked the walk, if you know what I mean.
It occurred to me that an old ball playing buddy of mine (We were on the Canada Games team together, but she went on to the 2000 and 2004 Olympics. She’s one of those naturally talented athletes that the rest of us would just have to hate if she wasn’t so damn nice) used to be married to a special ops pilot. I remember having an in-depth conversation about Navy SEALs and their training one of the last times I saw her when she came home from the States. You gotta admit, that’s not a common thing to talk about, especially for women–and Canadians at that, eh? 🙂 Plus, who else would have cared, let alone understood what the heck I was talking about? Love you, Jackie!
She had made many connections in her years stateside, and is now a firefighter in New Mexico. Anyhow, I shot her an e-mail asking if she might be able to put me in contact with someone who could share some insider knowledge about flying Black Hawks, and Pararescue Jumpers. Less than a day later she responded saying, “I work with a retired PJ and a retired Black Hawk pilot.” Holy hell, talk about a small world!
The information I’ve garnered so far is invaluable, plus I love getting an inside scoop from service members that have been out in the field. This makes me odd, I know, but I have two stacks of books on my bedside table: special ops non-fiction, and romances. What can I say, it works for me. Just last week my hubby was in bed next to me reading his Sports Illustrated (unless there’s a baseball article, I’m not really interested). He looks over and sees me reading a text on SERE training and says, “You’re weird.” Yeah, I guess I am.
This past weekend I also met with my dad’s flight instructor and a retired Canadian Navy helo pilot who was involved in a crash to get a realistic feel of what that would be like for my heroine, Devon Crawford, a medevac pilot. Both meetings were incredibly interesting.
I’m having a great time researching this, almost moreso than writing it! Who knows who I’ll meet next in my research travels? I can’t wait to find out.
Out of Her League Wins First Place!
I’m thrilled to announce that Out of Her League has won first place in romantic suspense category of the 2009 Volusia County RWA Laurel Wreath contest.
It beat out entries from several highly accomplished authors, but what tickles me the most is that the judges chose an e-pubbed book as the winner for the category. Sometimes it feels like e-pubbed authors don’t get recognition or respect from other sectors in the publishing industry, so it was nice that my entry (and my publisher) was taken seriously. And, they liked it! They really, really liked it 🙂 I greatly appreciate their support.
Plus, two fellow Greater Vancouver RWA chapter mates placed along with me. Susan Lyons placed second in the long contemporary category with her erotic romance She’s On Top (Kensington Aphrodisia), and Mary J. Forbes won the short contemporary with Their Secret Child (Silhouette).
Suck It Up Princess
This was one of my best coach’s favorite expressions. Admittedly, we were a pretty hardcore bunch of ballplayers. We trained and played eleven months a year, and in season it was rare to have more than a day off a week. Whenever someone got hurt, this same coach would undoubtedly ask, “Are you hurt? Or are you injured?” Meaning, if we don’t need to cart you off to the hospital, quit whining, suck it up and get back out there.
We got used to his tough love routine pretty fast. I still hear him sometimes in my head when I’m staring at my blank laptop screen wondering what the heck to write next. “Suck it up, princess.” And he’s right. As Todd Stone wrote in his book Novelist’s Boot Camp, you can whine or you can write, but you can’t do both.
Writers have to write, and if they want to succeed, they have to write constantly. They can’t sit around waiting for their muse to show up, and they can’t wait for inspiration to strike. Not all of as are as hardcore as Nora Roberts, who writes eight hours every single day–including Christmas, I’m told. Wow. Now that’s a level of dedication I can’t even aspire to, because I know it would never happen. I need my downtime to recharge my batteries, and I could never work on Christmas!
Here are some ideas for the less militant among us that have worked for me. Set a page or word count and a schedule you–and your family–can live with. If possible, pick the time of day when your creative juices seem to flow the best, and make it part of your routine. This is the only way my family has learned to respect what I’m doing. The schedule thing seems to make my hubby happier, otherwise he grumbles about me being attached to my laptop all the time. I write in the morning for an hour or two, then when hubby puts our little ones to bed. If I get an extra bit of time in between someplace, bonus.
My point is, even if it’s not as much time to write as I’d like to have, at least it’s something. I’ve got to make that window of opportunity work. No one’s going to hold me accountabale but me. No one can make me quit but me. No one’s going to do the writing for me. Yes, writing is hard. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it! But that’s no excuse. Just write. No whining. You can’t fix a blank page. Get the words down, and even if they’re awful, you’ve got something to work with when you go back and revise.
Okay, I’m hopping off my soapbox now. And as promised, here’s a picture of me on my way out for trick-or-treating on Halloween.
Happy writing! No whining.
