Enthusiasm

I was feeling kind of listless this weekend. I've missed three writing days this week, mainly due to the fact that I've been dragging myself out of bed at 5:20 a couple mornings (read: inhumanly early) to workout and promptly pass out on the couch by about 9 p.m. before I get my writing time in. I wasn't that inspired by my book for some reason and last night really struggled to make my daily goal. I'm still ahead of where I'd planned to be by this time but not by as much as I'd like to be. (Yes, currently, I measure my writing success by how far ahead of my goal I am. Writing to my goal? Bah. I may as well just extend my goal. But I don't. Why, I don't know.)

But this morning, for some reason, my enthusiasm has returned. Couldn't tell you why. Don't have a clue. But now I'm raring to go, just waiting to put my protagonist into deadly peril. Because it's fun to endanger fictional characters and see what they come up with to get themselves out of tough situations.

I wonder if all authors have those times where they don't feel like so much as looking at their text, never mind writing it, and then others where they can't get the story out of their head and just want to write, write, write. I bet they do.

Really, this is just a rambling post without much point to it, but it was just reassuring to me to see my enthusiasm for the story come back on its own. Had me a little worried there for a while ...

Also, random thought of the day: it's very cool to see animals with their natural maternal instinct. I got to see the kittens at my mom's place this weekend. Two weeks old. Momma cat watched us very closely to ensure we didn't hurt her babies. So cute!

You know you're a writer when

... you spend a disproportionate amount of time at work editing technical memos for passive voice.

*head hits desk ... hard*

Also:

... you interrupt your own internal thought processes to rephrase things that are never going to leave your head

... you read signs and think to yourself 'now I would have said it this way

... you get excited to have access to all the deals on Publishers Marketplace because you finally caved and bought a membership despite being four months from the query stage

I'm sure there are more if I think hard enough but I need my brainpower for writing so I don't want to hurt myself.

And this has nothing to do with writing whatsoever but WHY is House not on this week?? Stupid American Idol (I know, I know. Blasphemy. But the show just doesn't do it for me.)

Randomness

I finally joined MySpace, so you can go see my pretty page here. Essentially, I've found another way to waste time and distract myself from my writing ;) Willpower. I need willpower!

I picked up Laura Durham's (one of the Cozy Chicks) book Better Off Wed and a couple books by Joan Lowery Nixon. Now I have to find the time to read them. Along with Stephen King's On Writing and the other writing books my aunt gave me for Christmas that I haven't read yet. And the Clancy and Ludlum books I bought last summer and haven't read yet.

I've also added several more agent and author blogs to my links here. I haven't updated my site yet, mostly because I haven't gotten around to it.

What I really need to do is disconnect myself from the Net for awhile... I'm way too big a procrastinator.

Of names and Google

Ever since I started this blog, I've googled myself, I admit. I choose to ignore the fact that no one knows my name enough that they'd actually want to google me though eventually, like when I start querying, someone might actually look me up. I've read, I think on Miss Snark's blog, people talking about their concerns over what comes up when their name is googled. I'm not concerned; I figure agents are smart enough to realize that the Web is full of all sorts of wild and crazy things -- and, y'know, people.

I'm not concerned; I'm just amused.

If I google my name, in quotes, this blog is the 7th result and my user profile on blogger is the 8th. The amusing part is the 10th result, which is apparently a porn story. It would seem that some writer managed to give my exact first and last name to a character in a porn story they wrote. Heh. Like I said, amusing.

But that brings me to another, only slightly related topic. When I name characters I go to great lengths to avoid using names of people I know. Or, if I use the first names of people I know (I mean, come on, there are some names that it's just damn hard to avoid using), then I try to make them minor characters. Does anyone else ever wonder if they've given their characters names of real people?

I should google some of my characters, see what pops up.

Y'know, if I ever googled myself and came up with a book that had my name for a character, I might read it. So long as it wasn't porn. That would freak me out.

30,000

Broke 30,000 words on Sunday. (Yay!) And got feedback from family on my my Summit Prologue and my romantic suspense summary.

I also came to the conclusion that I won't be writing romantic suspense, per se, but rather a suspense novel with a heavy romantic theme. I have nothing against category romance -- for one, they're huge sellers. And whatever people choose to write or read is their own choice, and its all about what serves our needs as readers and writers (making us think, educating us, escapism, whatever). But I just can't envision myself writing category romance. I don't think I could write a 60,000-word novel. (Props to those who can, though.)

So now I think I'll be making my second book "chick lit suspense" rather than romantic suspense... maybe. Something like that.

And does anyone know what liquor stores are called in various European nations?