Quiet Keystrokes and Midnight Ramblings

I haven't had a lot of down time in the last few months (years?) but I do spend a couple hours here and there indulging in crappy tv to wind down at the end of the day every now and then. One of my indulgences is the show Wife Swap where two families switch Mom's for a week to discover how other families live and tackle all of the issues that come up when you're living as a family. Today I was thinking, when I am writing a lot it can be easy to get stuck in a rut and start writing in circles. There are lots of different writing exercises out there to get our creative juices flowing. But maybe the next time I get stuck in a rut I'll send an email to one of the other writers I know and ask what THEY are writing. Coordinating a swap with someone else stuck in a rut and switching ideas could help out a lot. What would happen if a Romance writer wrote a Mystery Thriller? Or a Journalist wrote a Fantasy? Even if you don't know someone else who writes, you can swap ...

The spring and summer are always really hectic for our family. We own an outdoors-focused business, and unfortunately that means that when the sun is out there is hardly time to write anything. My neighbor yesterday asked how "that journaling stuff" was going, and I must have looked absolutely dumbfounded. "Journaling?" I asked. "Yeah, you know, writing in books or whatever." Long story short, it gave me instant lessons about two things. First, that my neighbor doesn't really pay attention or remember the details of any conversations that we've had over the years. And second, that I need to find the time, no matter how crazy life is, to put some focus back on my writing. My third book has been sitting, half edited, since March. It's about time that I got back at that monster, and what better way to do that then to do what all great writers do when they have a project looming... procrastinate by updating this blog. I'm glad I did log...