Get Direction...PLEASE

Have you ever just had one of those days? It's Friday. I should be ecstatic to see the weekend. sigh. I'm not.

Unexpected bills, unexpected chores, and unexpected edits have turned my smiling face sour. And I keep procrastinating my work. Hence my post.

It's ironic, really, because last night I went out with a friend of mine for cocktails. I can't tell you how long it's been since I've done that. I have kids, so most of my nights are confined to the house and reruns of The Regular Show. And while I find Mordecai and Rigby hilarious, I can only take so much of Cartoon Network or that &#@!! Pokemon before my brain starts to decay.

So last night I sat and had intelligent adult conversation with a writer friend at a sushi bar. The Cosmo was delicious, as were the happy hour snacks. Our discussion of course turned to writing, and we talked about how hard we work and our schedules...

Fast forward to Friday at noon, and I'm still staring at my edits and scratching my head. My thoughts immediately race--not to work--to the fact that Starbucks' new Blonde roast isn't bad but still not as good as Raven's Brew. Did my phone beep? Man, there's still snow on the ground. Gee, I wonder what movies are soon coming out. I should look at some trailers. Oh, and I need more coffee. So I must get up and LEAVE MY COMPUTER AGAIN.

Man, I hate a lack of direction.

That's actually the hardest part of writing, in my opinion. Forcing yourself to sit down and put the words to paper/screen/pick your medium. It's easy to talk about writing or imagine your book finished and quite another to type the friggin' words.

It always cracks me up when I meet someone, they ask what I do, I answer, "I'm a writer," to which they reply,"Wow, me too. I have a children's book I'm planning to write." Or some other work that the person has been thinking about completing. Really? Because as fascinating as it is to meet someone who writes, for me, if you're just thinking about it, you're not a writer. Gee, I just thought about what it would have been like to attend medical school. Um, I'm not a doctor.

And I'm not poking fun (okay, I am) but if as many people had actually written what they talked about, maybe they'd see that writing is in fact difficult. And writing romance is as hard as writing literary fiction. Sure, it's different. I'm not after a Pulitzer Prize. In my books, not everyone dies, cries, or experiences tumultuous marriages, incest, grand misunderstandings and death. I'm a romance writer. Happily Ever After--all the way for me. But it's not that easy to think you can write two people having sex and falling in love together and call it entertainment--entertainment other people not related to you will pay money to read.

That billion dollar romance industry that so many people--sadly, men and women--scorn is popular for a reason. Romance readers buy a lot of books, and they want happy endings.

But in order to get a reader to that happy place, the writer (that would be me) needs to tune out the Internet, Twitter, Facebook, the news, Yahoo, etc, and write. Much, much easier said than done. Because the world keeps churning, interesting news continues to happen, and there are way, way too many funny things posted on Facebook and Twitter. Enough to consume 24 hours easily.

So with that said, I'm back to work on my edits and crossing my fingers I'll have them done by the end of the weekend...

Wish me luck, and have a nice Friday.