Putting off the inevitable

Today I was home from work with a bit of the flu. It's a fairly warm and sunny day here for the end of January. The birds are twittering away and for a few moments I sat on the deck just wrapped in a fleece jacket. The sun felt good on my face, and for the time being I enjoyed my mug of hot coffee, watching the birds on the feeders.

But I knew I had to get back to the keyboard. Isn't writing a tough task master?

Can you count the ways that we procrastinate, putting off the inevitable? I certainly can.

Dishes, laundry, paying bills, re-organizing the linen closet (ugh), naming the dust bunnies that continue to elude the vacuum, browsing on Pinterest (hours fly by!) . . . and the list goes on.

Why do we do this as writers? It reminds me of artists who quake at the bare white canvas before slapping on a blob of paint. Anything to kill off the taunting white paper / canvas.

Yes, we've all read the articles about how we should just roll up our sleeves and get down to it. That the more we write, the easier it comes, so they say.

Writers like Julia Cameron have published a multitude of books for creative folk that speaks of daily rituals to help the writer / artist / poet slip into a realm of right-brained creativity. And I do love to read her works even though there's a part of me somewhere deep in the back of my mind that doubts.

Easy to read, difficult to execute.

So what did I end up doing today? Rather than go back to my writings, I spent most of the afternoon creating this blog, adding links and other doodads. Which I love to do, don't get me wrong.

But no writing . . . nada . . . zip. Although when I was on the deck earlier, I did run through some scenes in my head for my very first Regency romance.

There, I said it. My very first. I am a beginner when it comes to romance. For years I've pretty much dwelt in the world of mysteries; even wrote a few.

The problem is, though, that writing is a very isolated craft, and I couldn't find an active, supportive mystery group in the area. But romance writers are rabid about support. You just need to check out those links on the right to see how much so!

This is my third year with RWA and CT RWA, and I'm hoping that "3" is the magic number. That this year, I'll stick to it and see it through to the "happy ever after" ending -- a published novel or novella.

That's the goal, so why not join me on this journey? I'll stumble and detour, I'm sure. But I'm sure I am not alone on that front.

Thanks and WRITE ON!
Claire

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Oh, dear! My bad . . .

Just getting back on track with social media and such -- summertime is such a suck-you-away-from-the-computer time, isn't it? What's been happening? Been working on At Long Last , the fourth and final romance in my School for Sophistication series, and it should be released in late July / early August. If you're on my newsletter email list, I just sent out a sneak peek of the cover. Not signed up yet? No sweat. Here's the link . Also, a freebie sale is going on as I type this entry. Another incentive to sign up! A Peek into Straight from the Heart I promised this in my last blog entry, so here we go . . . Ryan Cassidy, deputy sheriff, a muscular hunk of a guy, who's low-key, funny, sexy and falling for Giana Linstrom despite his fears of marriage. He's seen too many marriages go bad, including his own mother's. And now for Giana -- bubbly, enthusiastic, a dreamer whose dreams never seem to come to fruition. She's at a crossroads in her

Take a hint from Mr. Bradbury:

Don’t start out writing novels. They take too long. Begin your writing life instead by cranking out “a hell of a lot of short stories,” as many as one per week. Take a year to do it; he claims that it simply isn’t possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row. He waited until the age of 30 to write his first novel, Fahrenheit 451 . Stuff your head. To accumulate the intellectual building blocks of these metaphors, he suggests a course of bedtime reading: one short story, one poem and one essay. These essays should come from a diversity of fields, including archaeology, zoology, biology, philosophy, politics, and literature. “At the end of a thousand nights,” so he sums it up, “you’ll be full of stuff!” I'm going to try some of these tips -- write swift, write short; diverse reading to expand the old gray cells. Works for me! Ray Bradbury, recipient of the 2000 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, the 2004 Nati

Claire Hadleigh

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