Keep on Truckin'

We're back into almost normal mode around the house again, and I reached my daily wordgoal for the first time in two weeks. I am back on track now, and I'm going to work through the bumps in my path until I hit smooth rolling again.

It's easy to write when things are going great. The fresh idea you had straight from the box, inserted and tweaked into the fabric of your world until it fits, and you spin it until it's time for the next step to keep the ball going. But it's when you can't find that clever turn to keep the ball going that the true writers come out. They employ every bit of willpower, ingenuity, and often plain cussedness to make the story go, whether it wants to or not, until it's smooth sailing once again.

Also, how many metaphors, smilies, and cliches can you use in a paragraph? Go for it and find out.

September has rolled around, and the writing wolves are howling at my writing group doors and demanding that I start pumping out something to show them. I belong to two writing groups - one is a well-mixed group that always manages to help me improve my writing so I can find the gold nuggets amongst the shit, but the second is a specialization group for genre writing. It's only a select few friends, and the rules are simple - you must produce 1k a week, and the projects have to come through so we can rip them apart.

None of us are professionals in there. Inside "Ground Zero" we're cold-hearted lawyers searching for every loophole and problem with a piece that comes up. It's very good for me because I tend to be a big picture person who manages to tie most of the facts together, but they really help me clinch any holes, no matter how gaping they may be. Or how much I don't want to see them.

When you can find a good writing group, they're worth three times their weight in gold. Finding a good group is exceedingly difficult, and I'm grateful to have two.

Current Reads: Finally plowing through the Stephanie Plum series by Janet Evanovich. Not hard on the eyes. Terrific light reading. Snow Queen by Mercedes Lackey finally came out, and I finished it the second night I got it. The only thing holding back my writing now is my pile of books.

Current WordCount: 62,500/90,000