Sometimes just getting stuff on paper without the high helps...Cindy, I know you get pulled in a lot of directions...Susan too. I've found myself repeating things like "It's okay to suck." and "Failure is how we learn." during difficult sections. Not cheering, but it keeps me from freezing up or waiting to get "inspired". Because it is more the exception than the rule...I had a high about a month ago but there would be a lot of unwritten words if I waited for another one instead of trying to commit.

You're completely right about just writing it. At this point, because I am still kind of fond of two of the ideas (the two newest), I want to wait, 'til I can court them, properly.

For the story that was born soon after Ben, I did get an awful lot written down. I had a nearly supernatural boost in creativity when he was a baby. I don't know if I was on some "I HAVE GIVEN LIFE TO ANOTHER" ego kick, or what, but it was a great side effect. I don't know where it all is, now--the story or the creativity. I think a good deal of the story is on the hard drive of a broken laptop. There's probably some paper, somewhere around here, unless I got ruthless and tossed it out, when we moved.

The story I'm most likely to tackle first is the one that's only about a year old. But I need to do some serious research first, and I keep putting it off. I also just need practice. My muscle has practically atrophied.

This year, I lost free time. Last year, I had two days a week, where I had four childfree hours. The first semester of this (school) year, that plummeted to about two free hours. This semester, I have zero. Well, I have 15 minutes after I drop off Julia, while I dash across town, to get Chris. My "plan" is to get serious, once Chris is in school. In the meanwhile, I just blab or braindump.

Maybe it was hormones...there are times I write like a fiend OTR.(Wow, Bitches writing Workshop, much? Sorry if that was TMI.)

Not TMI for me, erika. It very well could have been hormones. It lasted quite a while, though, so I think it might have been somewhat psyche based, too. In general lately, I just feel like I am getting the life sucked out of me in every direction, and I just don't care enough to try to get serious. I can't finish a book as a reader, right now. I used to read a few books a week.

The only one that's percolating right now is this past NaNoWriMo. Stuff keeps happening to the characters, but I haven't actually written a word of it down.

The SO & I are having Year of the Artist, in which we give each other periodic challenges in various arts (those we are comfortable in and otherwise). His current one for me right now is to write a story in fifteen drabbles. I think I'm going to do the backstory of the NaNoWri 'cause so much of what happens for them comes from the backstory, but it's not all clear to me yet.

Long things that want to be written by me.

The thriller deb and a couple of others have seen the first chapter of.

A potential murder-in-a-small-town series set in a northwestern Pennsylvania town much like the town I went to college in, starring a New York cop turned pre-law professor and his wife, who's head of the Archaeology Dept. Handy when you need bodies discovered in strange places. "Dammit, what's this doing in my dig!"

Another cop story, but this cop is the younger brother of an aging rock and roll star who abandoned the family years before in search of fame and has been trying to mend fences with the family. Unfortunately, the wrong girl died of a drug overdoes at a party said rocker attended, and there's the question of just how closely big brother is trying to live the clean and sober lifestyle. Just imagine seeing your own big brother on a VH1 Behind the Music episode.

This is completely separate from the huge stories that want to be told in fandom.

Well, my dad and my brother are fighting about the nature of their insurance business right now. In the book they are fighting over millions, instead.

Tangentially, I'm an old fan of Jim Thompson 50s potboiler novels. They tend to be very trashy, and about the kinds of people who abscond with $2000 rather than $2 million. I didn't think that world really existed (any more, if it ever did), till I met my aunt's new husband, who is an aging insurance adjuster in Tulsa. Over the course of a fine dinner, he told some of the most hair-raising stories about drama over petty amounts of money, it was like he was a pulp narrator come to life.

If I'd taken notes, I'd have a 5-book deal by now.

The thriller deb and a couple of others have seen the first chapter of

That would be the thriller deb would like to see rather more of, and soon.

I'm not running out on the discussion - we're just out the door until late.

Nutty, can't you remember enough to write some of that? It sounds amazing. I'm thinking intelligent updated feminist Mickey Spillane and I'm salivating.

The thriller deb and a couple of others have seen the first chapter of.

Yes, this! That cliffhanger made me salivate. The others sounds good, too. What are you waiting for you, lady? Gentle nudge...

I have so many stories waiting for time to write them, it makes me nuts. And what makes me even crazier is that they're all very different. In the publishing world today, it seems to be true that you need to establish yourself in one genre (or type of novel) or another before you veer off into other territory, especially if you're writing genre.

But I have another YA series I want to tackle, a mystery series that's more psychological and about character than dead-body focused, a...regular old novel, for lack of a more descriptive term, about a woman and her family and what happens to them in the course of a particular year that makes them examine what they know about each other, and a couple of interrelated historical romances set in Gilded Age Manhattan, as well as three chick-lit type novels.

I need a magical eighth day of the week in which no one is clinging to my knee lisping "juith" or asking where his sneakers are or reminding me that the dry cleaning is due to be picked up...

Over the course of a fine dinner, he told some of the most hair-raising stories about drama over petty amounts of money, it was like he was a pulp narrator come to life.

Sounds like the stories my grandfather used to tell of being a probation officer in Detroit during the Prohibition. Some of the things they did! My grandfather would have these guys who were on probation pull practical jokes on his coworkers. Like hot-wiring their car and parking it two blocks away from where it was originally. Then watching the expression on the guys face when he came out to find his car missing.

My father told us one story of being in a car with my grandfather when he spotted someone who was wanted for a parole violation. Grandpa pulled out a gun and started shooting! With dad in the car! Wheee!