March 13, 2013 (Grab Your Pitchforks, Minions!)

This post doubles as my long-overdue ROW80 update (for my fans, that’s A Round of Words in 80 Days, a support system for times like…well, times like I’ve described below…)

Minions. Ah, dear minions. Everyone experiences a period of self-doubt now and then. Mine has been over the last several weeks. After reading someone else’s phenomenal work, I stopped writing and stepped back to analyze my work with outrageously critical eyes: This book isn’t like the other ____ books (different is good); this book doesn’t have all the cool crap all the other ____ books have (I have my own cool crap); this book doesn’t have nonstop action like all the other ____ books do (everyone needs a respite from intense physical action, even when just reading it).

While I’m the first to admit that my prose is not going to change the world and it’s not going to inspire the “great thinkers” and it’s undoubtedly never going to be seen in the Literary Fiction category (the last is by design; I’m a genre girl and proud of it), it also does not suck like I’ve been certain it has these last few weeks. I write to a specific crowd: those who want something beyond the ordinary, something that is just a little too extraordinary to be true, but which they hope – desperately – could happen. I write relationships and hope and maybe just a little magic to make readers crave what I’m serving. Yeah, some of what I serve is too coincidental to be real, just a little over the top sometimes – but I must do so to take you out of your world and into mine. In my defense, I seriously doubt that much of what happens in a Clive Cussler book is probable, but damn, I love his older books! Escapism, people – that’s what I offer. A portal from your world into one of my creation.

The reality: I have a mega-crap-ton of distractions, most of which I could ignore, but I find as I get older, the fine edge of focus I had as a teen and young adult has blunted to a flat plain of anything goes. And also, I have a new grandson making his appearance in the world next week. (This is my second grandchild. How can this be when I’m only 29?!?!) (Oh, okay, I have nine years experience being 29…) (All right, all right! NineTEEN years experience. Sheesh – what did you expect? I’m a writer – I make up crap for a living.) Anyway, the grandson – due next Tuesday and I’ve a crap-ton of things I’d like to accomplish before then, none of which I’m going to do, because instead I’m going to finish this book and work on getting the the third Harper & Lyttle book completed before the end of summer. Enough wallowing in self-doubt and the inertia that comes from a crisis of creativity (aka Prose Paralysis).

Feel free to prod me, minions. It’s why I’ve equipped you with those handy little pitchforks and the title “minions.”