Osiyo~

Wasn’t the Carina Press free reads last week just awesome? I hope you got all five! A great big ‘THANK, YOU CARINA PRESS!!!’ shout out for their generosity.

It’s nearly the end of June and I had hoped, planned, to finish the new round of revisions on Perfect Doctor Viv by the end of the month. I realize that to meet this goal I would have had to write. Actual words on paper, or computer, not wildly misplaced thoughts. But I’ve been in turmoil, my life is in turmoil lately. My FIL fell ill last year and needs someone with him all the time. It is my husband’s turn to care for his dad, which means it’s my turn. Unlike my BIL who just moved out, we own(ed) our own home on my sister’s land. To help FIL we had to physically pack up and move thirty miles to FIL’s. This also included leaving my daughter’s dog and my cat behind. As well as my dear horse, Sonny. Thankfully, my niece, w/help from my daughter, took over our house including physical responsibility of my animals. Also, thankfully, we’re close enough to visit often. (More on this topic later…)

But because of the moving preparations in the last few weeks I’ve had little inspiration or inclination to work on revisions. To say nothing of time. Nil. My muse left a Dear Jane note telling me to call when I was settled and ready to get serious about this writing thing again. Not only that, I didn’t have internet for the first week here! It’s cruel and unusual punishment to expect any author to live without our social networks, our peeps for longer than one short time a day! But, I’ve been trying to get back into my groove (and by ‘groove’  don’t mean my cool swing, but rather the ridiculous writing rut I live dependently in) and take advantage of the silence of networking.

In an effort to stay focused on the book I realized that, though I can see my hero in my mind I can’t describe him or imagine him as a real person. How pathetic, right? I mean, I have this completed manuscript with this rockin’ gorgeous hero,  a mediflight paramedic. Tall, strong, handsome. Brown hair and golden eyes that mesmerize my heroine. Generic. So, what does Connor McKay look like? Really? Every time I try to visualize him I see tall, stringy men with glasses and thinning, or nearly gone, hair. I know. Stereotyping, or a bad imagination.

So- in desperation to get my mind back on the revisions and the story I have a Harlequin/Mills and Boon editor’s interest in (still)- I went searching for Connor one night, followed by results that sent my writing friends and critique partners in to hyperventilation mode.

I done good- as my Daddy would have said. <grins> And, with this as inspiration I actually got a few gratifying words written today. What do you say? Can you handle a paramedic like Connor McKay?

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What do you do when life interferes and you totally lose your momentum, even on a book that you love? Do you work on something else to get the flow back? Take a time out to just refill the creative well? Or do you give yourself permission to just write crap in hopes that your muse will take pity on you and pick up the slack (because I know she’s sitting over my shoulder shaking her head at my pity party antics right now)? More over- do you have a good visual of your characters to fall back on?

Happy writing,

Dodadagohvi~