Bragging Rights

So here on Cape Cod we are a little obsessive about our baseball.  What can I -  we have the Cape League Baseball League in our back yard and the Boston Red Sox only a short drive away.  Well last night the best of Barnstable's little league players got together for the annual All-Star American vs. National Game. My son, Kyle was chosen as a pitcher.  We're just a tad bit proud LOL! 

He is a tiny little guy -- eleven years old and only 4'9" weighing about 68 pounds.   None of the batters ever expect much out of him.  Their mistake.  It is always fun to watch their face when the ball goes whizzing my them.  See he plays for the middle school as well and their pitching mound is a good twenty feet further back  He has to throw hard to make that  60' distance.  Shorten up that distance to 40', like last night, and he can do some damage.

Each pitcher gets to pitch only one inning (there are six innings total)  Here he is on the mound at the bottom of the first.  He sent all three batters packing! That's my boy!  Scored the first run of the game as well -- hit a single then stole his way home.  His team nick-named is Forest Gump at the beginning of the season and the chant Run Forest Run when ever he is on base.

Can you tell I am just a little bit proud???

Sun, Sand, and the Eternal Houseguests

This is my first week on Cape Cod without company.  No, seriously. We’ve had company of some sort or another for nearly 22 days straight and more set to arrive at the end of the week.  I guess that is one of the hazards of living where people want to vacation.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my family and friends, but I crave . . . desire . . . absolutely need my own space.  Maybe it’s the slightly imbalanced writer in me.  So to reward myself for not completely losing it on my guests I did what most year-round residents never do during the height of the tourist season – I went to the beach.  I grabbed some pizzas, a jug of lemonade, the kids sand toys, and headed down to the beach for dinner.

Much to my surprise, about forty minutes into my cherished unwind time my husband showed up, dessert and wine in tow. The sheer fact that he came spoke volumes.  See my husband doesn’t do crowds or sand – funny since it was his desire to live at the Beach Mecca of the East Coast.  He handed out dessert and sank into the chair next to me with nothing more then a smile and a fantastic and well appreciated offer of Merlot.  With the exception of the intermittent “where are the kids” comment we didn’t speak, just sat there staring out over the ocean.

It was dark when we got home and the kids literally fell into bed, sandy feet and all.  He poured me another glass of wine, popped in a movie for himself, and left me alone to bang out the three chapters that have been churning in my head since my doorbell first rang.

It was a good ending to a crazy three weeks.  Now I'm off to clean the house, scour my cookbooks for more entertaining recipes, and have everything in place for when the next round of house guests arrives on Friday.  Wish me luck!

In Search of a Title

I am always amazed when I see fellow writers who are only two to three chapters into their WIP's and they already have titles. Amazingly cool and thought provoking titles.  Cedar was completely finished and in the hands of beta readers before it's name came to me.

I am currently over 40,000 words into my latest WIP and still can't think of just the right name. I keep waiting for the perfect phrase or word to hit me, but so far . . . nothing.  So I am curious.  Are your WIP's titled before you even start writing or are you like me, nearly finished and combing through the ms for just the right phrase to stick on the title page.

Nothing like a bad query to get you writing!

I won the war with my muse!  Last night I poured out 1700 words in less the 45 minutes and woke up with the next scene racing through my head.  I wish I could give thanks to coffee or even the amazing bottle of merlot my husband bought to cheer me up.  But I can’t.  The credit and my undying gratitude lie with two people – one who challenged me to write the worst query of my life and the other who gave me some insight as to why my creative mind was refusing to cooperate.

Rebekah, an amazingly talented writing friend of mine, is hosting a “Worst ever query contest.” http://rebekahstories.blogspot.com/    I thought what the hell, it’s not like I was writing anything good . . . or anything at all lately.  I laughed hysterically as I read some of the others that were written and then poured 300 grammatically incorrect, cliché laden words out onto her blog.  It was the first time I was able to put pen to paper in over a week and it felt great.

Just last night I received another email from a different, equally amazing, writing friend of mine, Lindsay.  http://www.lindsayncurrie.webs.com/    She knew I was struggling to get my momentum back and wanted to give me some insight into why she thought my muse had gone into hibernation.  For the past few months I’d put an extraordianry amount of time and effort into Cedar.  Agent revisions, grammar checks, and countless re-readings have literally consumed my life.  Now that the editing is over and Cedar is on submission she figured it was only naturally that I’d have some trouble switching gears to my other WIP

She was 110% right.  I still find myself constantly wondering if I should’ve switched this word for that or added this element here.  As long as my mind was stuck on Cedar, nothing else was going to break free.  So, last night I put Cedar to bed.  Literally!  I put the entire edited copy on a new thumb drive, sealed it into a manila envelope, and tucked it into the bottom draw of my desk.  Then I sat down, fired up one of my neglected WIP, and wrote.  The 1700 words that finally flowed from my mind are far from polished and are in desperate need of a few good transition sentences to make it work.   But it’s a start, and a damn good one if I do say so myself!

So hats off to you two ladies.  With one bad query letter and some thoughtful insight you single handiedly jump-started my creative mind!

Waging War Against my Muse

So as many of you know I have been fighting my muse for the past week or so.  Sadly to say I'm losing the battle.  So, at the suggestion of a wise writer frined of mine, I am going to sit down in front of this computer for a solid hour today and write.  As she said, doesn't mattter what it is or how bad it comes out, just write something . . . anything.  After a couple thousand words, something useful is bound to surface.

So I must extend an apology in advance to my three beta readers Rebecca, Natalie, and Regina.  I do apologize for the numerous pages of crap you are going to have to sufffer through as I wage war with my muse.

My Muse is Refusing to Cooperate!

So I have this nasty little habit of letting my mind wander to far and too often. Usually I can rein it in, focus on one task from beginning to end while letting the other ideas fester just below the surface. But lately the creative side of my brain is refusing to cooperate. ARGH!!!! The result is three WIP’s, all past the 45,000 mark, all in desperate need of an ending.

Problem is my muse has gone in to hibernation leaving me staring at three nearly-completed YA novels. I’ve got all three of them out with beta readers, hoping . . . praying . . . banking on one of them making an insightful comment that will jolt my creative mind back into action. To make it worse, I even know how I want each of these three projects to end.  I can hear the characters talking to me though my haze of inaction. But each time I sit down and fire the computer up my mind goes blank, leaving me frustrated, over-caffeinated, and with no outlet for the dozens . . . literally dozens of plot ideas racing through my head.

One of my closest friends told me to lay off the caffeine, that it would make me calmer and thus more likely to tap into my inner muse. But let’s face it – its summer, I have three kids going in seventeen different directions, and company non-stop. Giving up my sacred coffee is sooooo not an option. Ditto goes for my chocolate-covered coffee beans.

So I am open to suggestions. What do you do when your muse refuses to cooperate?