Waitin' and wishin' and hopin' and dreamin'...

Writers do a hell of a lot of waitin'. We wait for inspiration, wait to reach our daily word count, wait after submission to editors... you get the idea.

Today I'm waiting on the husband. He's stuck in the as-yet-unnamed snowstorm in the Metro DC area, moving 600 ft in two hours. He's a smart boy, hit the store before he left work so that rotisserie chicken and gallon of milk didn't go to waste as he sits there and sorts through the glove box. Again.

I'm checking up on him hourly but it just occurred to me that if I had hours alone in a car (without moving), I'd probably be knee-deep in notes or started a new short story.

What would you do for three hours in a non-moving car (aside from the obvious, oh come on you know you were thinking it)? Heat/food are taken care of and a bottle of wine (or beverage of choice) is waiting at home. Write? Sleep? Chat on the phone? Give yourself a modified jailhouse tattoo?

I've named the storm: Edgar Allan Snow.

You're welcome.

A Dweam Wiffin a Dweam

I woke up this morning with the vague feeling I had just starred in Housewives of Santa Barbara. My father has lived there most of his life so I'm familiar with the beautiful scenery, spent many hours on the beach, and warm hospitality of the natives, but when did *these* women move in?

I'm not a regular watcher of the Housewives series, I believe I've seen two episodes and that was last week (ergo why it popped up in my subconscious, I'm not a regular television watcher of anything so it had free reign), but last night's dream briefly involved women complaining about new neighbors and watching a lantern bobbing up and down in the waves off the stretch of beach in front of their house. Cut to a dinner party that night and Flo from Alice (70s TV show) was the wife of the idiot earthquake researcher who had been made to swim out there to replace the lightbulb while her husband took notes on the trembling sand. The women stood and watched a row of tall glasses of water slosh over the rims and gossiped.

I know.

With no easy access to my tween's dream dictionary (buried under *stuff*) and refusing to look it up online, I'm curious as to what you think?

Midol with a tequila chaser

I've done it again. I woke up dark and early with only the moon to illuminate my stumbling to wake the girls for school when my sleepy back decided to have a hissy fit. 

"Husband." I said, bouncing a bit on the bed since I couldn't turn my head after sitting up. "Huuuuuuuuusband! I've thrown out my back!"

"Get a drink of water, you're dehydrated," he said.

My glare fell on his relaxed back, it obviously mocking me. The minutes ticked by, the girls needed breakfast and I needed a stiff drink to ease my muscles at 6:15am. My patience stretching as thin as Kim Kardashian's skirt fabric, I rolled out of bed and hobbled down the hallway. "Water, my ass."

Ten minutes of yoga stretches later where the best I could do was reach my knees while bent at the waist and standing and I'm still in bad shape.

"Bring me Midol!" I yelled. I could wash it down with the tequila I was dreaming of, forget the coffee - this required serious action. He brought me water.

"Where are the pills o'glory?" I asked. This was then followed by his five-minute lecture on the benefits of exercise. He won't be making it into work today. My foot reflex works just fine.

Writing communities

I love Absolute Write, let me get that out of the way right now. I've been a virtual card-carrying member since 2006 and was a moderator of two forums - Writing for Children and Freelance - for three years. I respect the members and moderators, break into spontaneous dancing when one of the 30,000 members succeeds in their personal goals be it their first publication, a new book deal or finishing their first poem, and count my closest writing friends within their numbers. AW has been the right fit for me during different parts of my writing career, though at times it feels like a world-wide dysfunctional family and you're trying to stay away from the weird aunt who keeps a stash of carpet fluff as a pet.

At their best, these communities serve to unite those with common interests. Finding support, someone that "gets" you and, the occasional romance popping up between members isn't uncommon. At their worst, I've seen them described as inclusive, dominating and frustratingly hard to fit in. So what's the perfect size of community for you? Do you feel a small number of writers meeting at a local community center or library is best? A large writers' conference-based community? A Yahoo group that supports its members by staying in touch through email?  What are your experiences with writing communities? Does in person work better for you than online?

NightWriter

I love to write at night. I swear I'm part wombat since I skulk around my house turning off extraneous lights as soon as the sun goes down. If I could write by candlelight and the computer, I'd be all over it -- at least until my optician brings down the axe on my eyesight with a new set of reading glasses. Not sexy.

Due to my schedule, however, most writing gets shoved into the early afternoon while the girls are in school and if I can convince the four-year-old to play with something other than sharp objects. I've read of parents that rise before the crack of dawn to crank out a few pages, if I did that they'd be filled with absurd vowel usage and likely more than one expletive if the coffee weren’t finished yet. I'm sure my beta readers appreciate the wait until the afternoon.

But in those quiet hours after I duct tape the children to their beds and the husband is wrapped up in another sudoku, I can get back to pirates and ghosts (or whatever the flavor of story is at the moment) with only the moon for company. And I am, at last, in the groove.

When's your groove?

Coffeehouse of the Damned - Zombie poetry & Valentines

I'm not a poet. They live in lofts and wear berets and can rhyme the word "orange" while looking delicate and lovely. I'm more of a scrapper. I can twist song lyrics into weird and wonderful new sentence structures that make my children laugh. Every once in a while, I come up with a dirty limerick but I save those for special occasions, like Christmas and my grandmother's birthday, "Wha? She did what with a poodle? Oh, Stacey."

Thus, I never expected to have zombie poetry and haiku fall into my lap. The Coffeehouse of the Damned has been working its way into my brain for about six months now, since I started composing ditties for The Zombie Dating Guide's facebook fan page, but didn't take me by the throat until today.

And, it being a month before Hallmark's second favorite holiday, I thought I'd share the Undead love with some with ZDG's new Valentine line:

Zombie goodies

I'm doing more research on zombie goodies for ZDG; there are far more twisted minds out there than my own, Internet:

Flesh-eating zombie action figures. 
Well, action is a bit misleading. How about the sluggish-but-will-bite-your-brain set?

Their victims. Duh.

Naturally followed by the Angry Mob playset. 

What little girl wouldn't love this to cuddle up to?

Bowling for zombies. I wonder if they pick themselves up again after you knock them down?

 Get your geek on for the zombie Stormtrooper.
Yes, I'm ordering one as soon as they're back in stock. Don't judge.

Then there's the practical zombie accouterments:

Be honest. Do you really want another year of The Far Side?

Things I want to see:

• Zombie head bowling ball
• Zombie Roomba (vacuum cleaner)

What did I miss?

Inspiration and insidious Inception

I finally got around to watching Inception last night. Aside from waaaaaaaaaaay too many fight scenes and poignant top sequences, it did manage to plant the idea of where-the-heck-did-that-come-from in my brain... just as planned.

This morning I went over my short list of possible topics to write on for various publications and topping the list was "do zombies dream?" Then again, I also had one on the propensity of ghostly activity trapped within the stone walls of structures due to the magnetic content of the rock, and one on why I like cheese so much. Let's just say I'm eclectic.

Friends tell me inspiration strikes while they're in inconvenient places like the shower or in the car while driving with only a two-year-old to shout notes to. The only thing I'm doing in both of those places is singing bastardized zombie songs - though I don't have to change the words to Bad Romance - and I somehow manage to find inspiration through offhand Twitter remarks and at Food Lion deciding whether the family colon needs 9-grain wheat or if I can slip in some white bread without dire consequences. I know. Envy me.

What's next on your topic list? I'm going to spend the day thinking of the karmic consequences of Inception until my brain explodes. And cheese.

Five tips for writers

As the first day of 2011 slips into night, I wanted to come up with something less awkward than a list of resolutions that won't make it to Valentine's Day. Since I like things short and snappy, I decided to share a list of five tips I've learned as a writer in the last year:

1. Never forget that writing, while it gets the boys to pay attention to you for something more than your boob size, is a business. If you're serious about writing as a profession, do your research before mass emailing agents with sparkly clip-art ridden queries. Speaking of queries, keep them to the point; you can share more about your Rainbow Pony collection later but right now, stick to the story.
   
   
2. Social media can be your friend -- or bite you in the butt. Twitter is an excellent way to meet people in publishing but take heed that the photos of the lapdance at the convention live forever on someone else's hard drive and can make the rounds.
   
   Have a grievance during the publishing process? Editor cut out your sub-darling just when it was getting to the sword fight? Talk it over with a friend before venting on facebook. We've seen too many authors fail to tuck it back in when they get upset and screw up a good fanbase when they go nuts on Twitter.
   
   
3. Even if you're not actively writing due to day jobs, travel or that pesky way life can intrude, keep your plot or next article fresh in your mind so you can jump in when you do get a spare thirty minutes. Think of it as priming the pump, baby.
   
   
4. Keep your social life outside of the computer active. I know the friends trapped inside your monitor are awesome but to keep your sanity just a tiny bit longer, make an effort to see people who like you just because you smell nice.
   
   
5. Read. Read outside of your genre, read the newspaper everyday. Read to your children, the neighborhood children, read to the senior who no longer can revel in a good book without help and would love the sound of your voice. There is no writer that cannot learn something new from another's turn of phrase or touched by a writer's experience.

So, what tips can you leave for us? Please post on your blog and leave a link in the comments or within the comment section itself; I'd love to see them!

Happy 2011!

Image credit: dlwagner.blogspot.com