Embrace your Beloved.

Last night, my paternal grandmother died. She was 93.

Grab someone (heck, it can be your pet!) you love and give them a long hug. Then go celebrate something together.

Embrace life. It is the reason we write. And it's the best way to mourn a loss.

Grooving to the baseline.

In my head, I never work hard enough and I never get enough done. I'm sick of it.

For the next two weeks, I am taking aim at my anxiety about 'working enough'. I'm going to overwhelm it with (get this) actual data on my work habits. I'm getting a baseline of behavior.

All I'm doing is keeping a simple log on

1. What I am doing: Am I in meetings? Updating my blog? Doing promotional work? First draft composition? Brainstorming?
   
2. How long I'm doing it: pretty self explanatory there. And
   
3. How I feel about the work. Basically, did I think I did ok work, good stuff, or Yowza! level material.
   

I've been doing it for three days so far, and I am already amazed by my real progress versus my imagined progress. My early prediction for this experiment is that I will find out just how much I downplay how productive I really am.

I'll keep you posted!

Talking back.

It's time to revamp my website and blog, so tell me what kinds of things you like to see on an author's site.

Writing excerpts? Industry insight? Writing how-tos? Craft? How not to drive yourself crazy as a writer?

I also have a Facebook account now. Find me under Linda Mercury. :)

That whole tortured artist thing.

Some days when I feel like I'm not getting enough done, that my writing is weak, trite, and meaningless, that I'll never amount to much, I understand why writers have a stereotype of drinking too much.

Of course for me, drinking too much is two glasses of wine with dinner and then toddling off to bed early.

It lacks the flamboyant drama, but it's ever so much easier on my liver.

Scaring the hell out of myself.

Both Bob Mayer and Michael Hauge said many brilliant things this past weekend. Fortunately, I wrote them all down and I'll be able to work my way through them all.

The biggest lesson I got, though, really threw me for a loop.

You've got to go where the fear is, both your characters and yourself.

As the old saying goes, "If you have a character who is afraid of water, she'd better be in the ocean by Act Two."

As an author, I'm afraid of revealing too much of myself to my readers. Where does the line fall between pulling in real emotion and oversharing?

That scares me.

I guess that means I'd better go there.

Well, so much for that.

Every time I sat down to write about archetypes, I managed to find something else that really really had to be done at that moment.

Like plucking my eyebrows. Or starting an IM with a friend. And quite frankly, it was amazing how often I really needed a nap Right Now.

I finally had to admit to myself that my brain was not ready for archetypes right now. Curses!

Instead, I'm getting ready for a Winter Writing Intensive put on by the Rose City Romance Writers. Michael Hauge and Bob Mayer are coming to the area and are planning on kicking our asses. I'm preparing by getting my new work-in-progress to the point where I can discuss it (sort of) intelligently.

So I'm back to that!