On Keeping Your Writing Habits

I attended a fantastic event over the weekend, the Heart of Dixie's annual luncheon. Heart of Dixie is the RWA chapter for the Huntsville, Alabama area. It was a very fun day, full of lots of amazing authors and readers. And I am thrilled to announce that I've been asked to come back next year and be their keynote speaker. It's my first romance oriented keynote, and I'm already planning out what I may want to cover.

I got to meet the incredibly prolific Lora Leigh. Prolific, as in she used to write 12-14 books a year, and now has backed off to between 6-8. That's a lot of books. Makes me feel positively anemic by comparison.

My table at the luncheon was filled with both readers and aspiring writers, so the conversation flitted from topic to topic, but eventual landed on my writing habits. I had asked Lora Leigh if she is able to work on multiple books at once or if she's a one and at time girl, and she answered she was one at a time. I'm like that too. I find it difficult to juggle too many projects at once.

I shared my process with my table, how I feel I must write 1000 words a day. I really should have said in order to meet my own writing goals, I must average 1000 words a day. Because that's much closer to the truth. To say I write a 1000 words a day is disingenuous. Life gets in the way. Edits come in and need handling. You get sick, pets die, family members need your attention. You get up in the morning and just plain don't feel like working, and instead pour a cup of tea and grab a nice juicy historical romance and lose yourself in that world. 

I want to write every day. I really do. But the truth of the matter is, I don't.

In all honestly, I haven't been writing. For a while now.

It's not that I haven't been WORKING, quite the opposite. I loved this great piece on what life is like as a published author. It's very true, and exactly what's been happeneing here at Chez Ellison: The tour to handle, all the PR and interviews and blogs, revisions on Edge of Black, touchups to another project, the website to redo, a short story to plot, my previous shorts to put on sale, bios to update, books to read, research to be done, ideas to ponder, closets to straighten, Rita dresses to shop for, and a few other rather important things that shall not be named as of yet going on. I'm utterly exhausted come 6pm, and ready to turn off the computer and veg out in front of the TV.

But as far as creating? As in new ideas, new words on the page creating? 

Nope.

The longer I go like this, the more nervous I get. It happens about twice a year - usually right around release time. I know myself well enough to know that the habit of writing is almost more important than the writing itself. And when I finally sit back down to the page, it's going to be a rough few days. But the words will come, the daily counts will start adding back up, and by mid-July, I'll have a chunk of work behind me. 

But it's these in-between moments, when I've just finished a book and am about to start another, that I start getting hard on myself. Nora Roberts takes a day off between books. So does Allison Brennan. And if I want to emulate the people I greatly respect, I need to start cutting back on the in-between books downtime. I've taken almost a month this time, and while it's been lovely, I'm getting really antsy. I think I've finally decided that it's time to offload some of my writerly duties to someone else. And we all know how great I am at giving up control. 

So wish me luck this week as I attempt to let go. And get my writing habit back on track.

On Transforming Dr. Samantha Owens

(This essay appeared on the Harlequin Blog April 30, 2012)

We writers have voices in our heads. It’s just a fact of life. The voices speak to us, we write their words on the page, and people read the stories and are captivated, drawn into a land of make believe.

All right. Let’s be honest and call this what it really is. Controlled psychosis.

You laugh, but think about it. Where else in the world are you allowed to let the little voices in your head control your thoughts, your words, and your deeds? Hmmm?

Most writers are loners, happily spinning yarns with their imaginary friends day in and day out. There are a few of us who are extroverts, who don’t like being alone, who thrive on connection, and communication with the real world. The rest of us are completely happy left to our own devices. We’re the ones who would survive solitary confinement – there would be so much time to create, to allow characters to develop and ripen into the kind of people we are fascinated with. Whores and heroes, cowboys and queens and teachers, private investigators and cops, and of course, no story in the crime genre would be complete without a medical examiner.

My medical examiner has existed for several years. Dr. Samantha Owens was first written as the foil to my main character, homicide lieutenant Taylor Jackson. In her very first foray onto the page, many books ago, she scrapes something off a dead body into an evidence collection bag and promptly takes a deep long whiff. I knew immediately this wasn’t a weak woman. As her character evolved, she became more than a foil – she was the conscience of the Jackson series. It was inevitable that I’d write a book with her at the center, she’s got too much spark to ignore, or resist.

Thankfully, my agent and the fine folks at Mira agreed, and off I went into Samantha’s world, whistling a happy tune.

But Sam’s story was about to take a turn for the worse. Any time you have a spin off series, it’s good to give the lead character some space from their previous role. In my case, I went to the extreme, and killed off her husband and children. Clean slate. Clean break.

Heartbreaking, though. And very hard for me. I’d grown attached to the characters, was living vicariously through Sam’s mothering of her children. I have none of my own, despite years of trying, and it was fun to have a set of twins on the page to play with. And Simon, her husband, had been a fixture in the series since the first unpublished manuscript, earnest and supportive and smart.

I’ve learned that sacrifices must be made to be true to your art. They do say to murder your darlings. In this case, with a spin-off, set in Washington, D.C. instead of Nashville, that sacrifice had to be Sam’s family.

The loss changes her. Instead of the strong woman from the Jackson novels, this Samantha Owens is delicate. Almost as if she were burned over 80% of her body, and the flesh has grown back a translucent pink; no longer her armor, but simply a sheet covering her pain, one that can be ripped off at a moment’s notice. Her scars may be internal, but she must overcome them daily just to function.

This decision also gave me a chance to have a clear reference to the huge losses Nashville experienced during the 2010 floods. It is a fortuitous sign that the book releases on the second anniversary weekend. We’ve rebuilt, but so many lost so much, and I wanted to have a tribute, a shout out, to my city.

I hope you enjoy the kinder, gentler version of Samantha. She’s still a tough cookie, but now she’s every woman, every man, who’s experienced a loss. Someone to identify with, and to root for. Someone who shows us that hope springs eternal, and you can survive even the worst of experiences.

On the death of a bird

Last night, a small bird came to our back deck to die.

We went out to grill, and there it was - old, and clearly in its final moments. We brought it some water, which was refused. I said a prayer, and told it not to fight too hard, and we left it to its course, checking occasionally to see if the time had come. It was not a gentle, nor quick death. The birds sang in the yard, a song of silence, and I was compelled to find something to mark this lone being's solitary and inevitable passage. 

This is what I found, and was somewhat comforted. 

Death of the Bird

 by Alec Derwent Hope

For every bird there is this last migration;

Once more the cooling year kindles her heart;

With a warm passage to the summer station

Love pricks the course in lights across the chart.

Year after year a speck on the map, divided

By a whole hemisphere, summons her to come;

Season after season, sure and safely guided,

Going away she is also coming home.

And being home, memory becomes a passion

With which she feeds her brood and straws her nest,

Aware of ghosts that haunt the heart's possession

And exiled love mourning within the breast.

The sands are green with a mirage of valleys;

The palm tree casts a shadow not its own;

Down the long architrave of temple or palace

Blows a cool air from moorland scarps of stone.

And day by day the whisper of love grows stronger;

That delicate voice, more urgent with despair,

Custom and fear constraining her no longer,

Drives her at last on the waste leagues of air.

A vanishing speck in those inane dominions,

Single and frail, uncertain of her place,

Alone in the bright host of her companions,

Lost in the blue unfriendliness of space.

She feels it close now, the appointed season;

The invisible thread is broken as she flies;

Suddenly, without warning, without reason,

The guiding spark of instinct winks and dies.

Try as she will, the trackless world delivers

No way, the wilderness of light no sign;

Immense,complex contours of hills and rivers

Mock her small wisdom with their vast design.

The darkness rises from the eastern valleys,

And the winds buffet her with their hungry breath,

And the great earth, with neither grief nor malice,

Receives the tiny burden of her death.

A burden, and a gift.

Namaste.

Update on 2012-05-02 15:10 by JT Ellison

We have buried our guest, as I promised her last night. She sought the safety of our deck for her final hour, I felt it was the least I could do to assure her that nothing would disturb her death, nor her little body once it was over.

The majesty of it all... sigh.

On Ebooks and Smatterings

The digital version of A DEEPER DARKNESS is on sale today! 

Please consider ordering through your local independent, who can get you both a good deal and a version for just about every ereader out there.

And if you prefer books of the more tactile variety, there are signed copies of A DEEPER DARKNESS at both Reading Rock Books and Parnassus Books. 

Audio, as always, read by Joyce Bean, available as well.

We've had a bit of a perfect storm of publicity in the past couple of days, so instead of inundating you with link after link, I thought I'd pull them all together in one place for you to peruse at your leisure, should you be so inclined.

If you're in Nashville, I'm appearing on WSMV More at Midday today at 11am 

From LitStack - a featured author interview 

From Bookreporter - a hella good review and contest

From the Harlequin Blog - How I took Samantha Owens from supporting character to protagonist 

Reading a poem for the 5-2

AuthorLink Interview with Paige Crutcher

From ITW, a Between the Lines interview with Brett King

On what I'm currently reading

The Page 69 Test

Q&A on The Reading Frenzy with Debbie Haupt

And my favorite -  My Book, The Movie is now showing

Phew! Let the games begin. 

On Om Shanti Shanti Shanti

Do you yoga? I began back in the fall, a twice weekly practice that has ebbed and flowed over the past several months. When I started I could barely do a downward dog, pigeon wasn't at all challenging but I couldn't stand in mountain pose with my eyes closed, and I wondered if I would ever be able to do tree, as balancing on one leg was honestly a joke.

Six months later, my guru finished our session Saturday morning with a delighted smile. "You just did an intermediate to advanced level class." she said. "You don't even realize how far you've come."

I pondered that statement as I drove home. Without a doubt, I am physically stronger. I've added a solid fifteen to twenty yards to my golf drive, for example, so I know there are more muscles in the somewhere.  I dream about poses I haven't even tried yet, much yet mastered. Last week I took an online class that was exceptionally challenging and only pondered quitting twice, because the poses were well beyond my current abilities (balancing poses still give me fits. I blame the top-heaviness.) Each time, I persevered, adapting poses until we returned to a more manageable situation. When I finished savasana, I was pleased with my effort.

Pleased, but not satisfied. Because yoga is more than mastering poses for me. It is about the transcendence that I feel, the peace, the sheer connectedness with my being. It's almost a state of hypnosis. It is somthing I strive for in my meditation as well, which in and of itself is wrong, striving guarantees you won't find what you seek. You must be. Yoga is the same way. That transcendence doesn't happen every time, but it is glorious when it does.

My guru reminds me that we approach our practice as we approach our life. And as I grit my teeth and try to force my body into positions that it most likely was not meant to go into, I think about that adage. I unclench my teeth, soften my gaze, smile. "It's just yoga, baby," my guru coos at me. And we giggle when I lose my balance, and try, and try, and try again.

I can say unreservedly that yoga has changed my life. My perspective. Like writing, days when I don't do yoga aren't good days. Days when I write and yoga are stellar. And when I find myself leaning over my laptop, gritting my teeth, I soften my gaze, and smile, and remind myself that determination is a good thing, but relaxing and letting it flow is always more preferable.

Today, as I march into another year, I look back on the previous birthday and ask myself - are you happier now than you were then? Are you doing what you love? Are you finding ways to make those you love happy? The answers are invariably yes. But this year, I add a new question.

Are you at peace?

And the answer is found in my mantra. Om shanti, shanti, shanti.

Everything peace, peace, peace.