Yep. It does.

Happy Halloween and weekend!

Come read about my shoe obsession.

Hey, gang! I’m over at Pop Culture Divas today talking about Today’s Blockbusters, Tomorrow’s Classics. Stop on by and add your two cents worth!

I posted this on RomErotica a couple of weeks ago, but thought I’d post it again. This may be a repeat for some of you and I do apologize but I was up super late last night editing and getting caught up on Lost.

I get funny reactions from people when I tell them I’m a published author. Everything from “I’ve always wanted to write a book” to “Since you write romance, are the sex scenes from your own life experiences?” Yeah, that last one was a bit of a shock. I think the most common one, though, is the I’ve-Always-Wanted-To-Write-Syndrome. For the purposes of space and this post and my fingers, I’ll call it The Syndrome.

The Syndrome doesn’t care what race you are or how old you are. It doesn’t care how much money you make or what kind of car you drive. It doesn’t care if your house is 1200 square feet or 3200 square feet. I’ve had people from the age of 12 to 60 tell me they’ve always wanted to write a book. And my response back to them is always, “So why don’t you?”

They shrug and give me some lame excuse as to why they can’t or won’t.

I’m too busy.

I have a full time job.

I don’t know where to start.

Let’s take a moment to dissect all three of these, shall we?

The I’m-Too-Busy Excuse. The simple fact is you’re not. Are you too busy to watch 23408 hours of shows on your DVR? Are you too busy to spend hours upon hours of playing on MySpace/Facebook/Twitter? This is merely a cop-out in my book (no pun intended).

I used to watch about six hour-long shows a season. And then came the mid-season replacements and the summer replacements. And then I got addicted to HGTV and the Food Network. I found I was spending more time in front of the TV doing nothing than anything else. I cut my TV time down to three shows: Lost, Gray’s Anatomy and Legends of the Seeker. That’s it. And they’re all recorded on the DVR and when I have time, I catch up.

If you cut back on your TV watching or any other time-suckage activity, then you can find an hour or so a day to sit down and start writing really bad prose. Because, trust me, when you first start it will be really bad (but don’t let that discourage you…more on that later).

I’m not saying you should ignore your kids or spouse, the laundry, or any other important household/domestic chore that needs attention. I’m saying if there’s a will, there’s a way. You can make the time to write.

The I-Have-A-Full-Time-Job-Excuse. Here’s a nugget of information for you – most writers have a full time job. Some of us, Nora Roberts, JK Rowling, Stephen King, et al. excluded, have responsibilities like a mortgage and a car payment and therefore cannot quit our full time job that pays the bills to write full time. (Unless, of course, we have an independently wealthy spouse and then go for it.) Because, regardless of what anyone tells you, just because you make that first sale doesn’t mean you’ll be making a six figure advance giving you ample time to sip champagne and eat bon-bons.

No, what it instead means is that you have to get through your edits. Despite the fact you sold your novel and your editor loves it, you will have edits to do. And, really, your editor is only trying to make your book even better than what it was when you submitted.

And then comes the promotional portion. You’ve sold, you’ve edited, it’s perfect and ready for publication. But now you have to get your name out there, buy advertising, do a blog-tour. If you’re lucky and your publisher has a budget for marketing, then you’ll get some help in that area. If you’re with a small press, it’s basically up to you to do all the legwork. It’s not just sitting back and earning royalties. If you don’t get your name out there, you won’t have any royalties.

Most of us with full time jobs still find time to write and do all of the above (as well as a myriad of other writing-related things). It goes hand-in-hand with the previous excuse – you make time. No matter what. If you really want to do it and have the drive to do it, you find the time.

The I-Don’t-Know-Where-To-Start Excuse. So you’ve made the commitment to yourself to start writing. You’re driven. You’re full of determination. You want to do it! You sit down at the computer…and face a blank screen with a blinking cursor. Now what? You don’t know where to begin. You have no idea.

Keep it simple. Set a word count goal and aim for it. Do you have characters talking in your head? Write their dialogue. Is there a certain setting you want to write about? Start writing a scene in it. It doesn’t have to be perfect – it won’t be. This is the time to make mistakes and learn from them. This is the time to find a great critique partner and learn find out what works, what doesn’t. The most important thing is to just start writing and if it sucks, throw it out and start something new.

Read. Read a lot. Never stop reading. Read things you wouldn’t normally pick up. Read your favorite authors and dissect their stories from start to finish. Ask yourself what you liked and why. What did they do well? What resonated with you? What drew you to the story and why? Likewise with reading something you didn’t like. Ask yourself all the same questions.

Every time you write, you get better. After all, you wouldn’t expect to sit down at the piano for the first time and play like a concert pianist, would you? No. It takes practice. Writing is like that. It’s practice, perseverance, a little bit of luck and a whole lot of determination. (And maybe some blood, sweat and tears thrown in for good measure.)

If you want to write, and you can get out of your own way, you can do it. I have all the faith in the world you can.

I neglected the blog today – but I WILL be back. I promise. I was up super late (midnight!) working on Phoenix last night. That book is totally rocking and I’m really immersed in the world when I’m writing it. I’ll post a snippet soon to whet your appetite.

Come back tomorrow for my guest, Maria Zannini. She’s talking about Death And Taxes.

I’m going to be lazy today and not post my usual post – mostly because I was up late last night working on contest scores.

BUT! Fear not, fellow readers. I do have a post up today over at Pop Culture Divas (formerly Miss Make A Movie) about Irish Movies, in celebration this month of St. Patrick’s Day. Pop on over there and leave a comment, won’t you?

My regularly scheduled blog will return tomorrow. Happy Wednesday!

Hey, gang! It’s a double-blog day for me. I’m just blogging all over the place. First, catch my Star Struck fashion no-nos at Sole Struck Fashions today. And, second, I’m at Miss Make A Movie talking about upcoming movies.

It’s been one of those weeks for me – BUSY. I finally started reading contest entries. I have two more to read for one contest and then five to tackle for another (and five more on the way for yet another). I’m also writing an article for a guest blog. That will be up sometime next week, I think. I’ll give you the skinny when I get the details.

Soccer has finally started. First game is Sunday. Practice is in full swing. (Hey that was almost a haiku.) It’s supposed to be 80 this week! Crazy February weather.

I got an email from a lady asking me if I wanted to write an article on their online shoe store. That’s a no brainer.

And have I mentioned I have second round edits of TAKE ME I’M YOURS due on Friday and I haven’t even started? They aren’t extensive so I can probable knock them out in an evening. I just have to get started.

So yesterday evening was about getting my butt in the chair and working away the night. I accomplished a lot, too. Go me!

Anyhoo… I’m on Twitter. I’m not exactly sure I’m Twittering like I should be. I mean, should I Twitter whenever a random thought comes across the brain? Or is there something more to Twittering than that? Is there an art to Twittering? Because, quite frankly, I’m not sure I get the whole Twitter Movement. Maybe some of you have an idea or two on the Twitter-tastic thing I’m missing out on. Please share.

Oh, and hey, I’m looking for guest bloggers. So if you’re a writer and you want to, say, write a little ditty about writing or do a little promo, shoot me an email.

I’m blogging today at Miss Make A Movie about movie nostalgia, if you want to check it out. It’s here.

So, becuase of all the outrage of Facebook’s new Terms of Service, they decided to go back to the old ways of doing it. I guess there was too many folks upset about the new TOS and who can blame them. I certainly don’t want Facebook to claim my stuff for all eternity.

You can read the official post here, if you’re so inclined.

I’ve been sort of on fiction-hiatus this week after finishing the book. But that’s not to say I haven’t been writing. Not at all. I’ve been writing articles like a madwoman for the various places I blog. (I’m blogging on Friday and again next week at various places.) Plus I’m reading blogs and soaking in the information. I’ve been getting ideas for some things I want to do in the coming weeks.

It just takes so much time and planning, of which I don’t have a lot of in the evenings. So I have to be super organized when I get to my desk at night. The first hour is about getting through all my email and cleaning out the inbox. It’s starting to drive me crazy to have more than 100 messages there. And that’s just my inbox. That doesn’t include the various filters I have going on the email to filter out the messages into their respective folders so I can give them the necessary attention later.

Plus I have contest entries to judge. Five for our contest and I have more on the way from others. This is the busy time of year I suppose.

And the DVR is waiting to be watched… Perhaps this weekend I can get some of that caught up.

At least the bills are paid for the week! Whew.

Hey, gang! I’m over at Sole Struck Fashions today blogging about high heels. Check it out of you can.

Okay, so I admit. Last night, I didn’t write. No, wait. I take that back. I did write, just not on anything fiction. Instead, I wrote some non-fiction things and did a lot of legwork and research. My creative brain decided to snap off last night, refusing to turn back on. Instead, the brain wanted to do other business-related things. So I gave in.

I did my yoga, which was fantastic as always. I feel so much better after 45 minutes of that. Then I had tuna salad for dinner and chopped up the strongest onion I’ve ever had. I swear, you could smell it a mile away. Even after using mouthwash, I still had that onion taste in my mouth. Blech.

But back to the writing thing… it seems like I always get hit with inspiration at the weirdest times. And mostly times when I don’t have a way to write things down. Lately, it’s been in the morning on my short drive to work. What is up with that? And then I have to rush inside, sit down at the computer, and scribble some notes. I’ve found if I don’t go with that inspiration when it hits, it’s gone. Like a balloon floating into the atmopshere. It’s *poof* gone.

Not much else to blog about today. It was a fairly uneventful day yesterday.

Back to the real world.

Hey! I forgot I was blogging today at Miss Make A Movie. Well, I didn’t forget actually. I had already posted but I forgot to tell you all! Come on by and check it out. Click here.

For a while, I got up and went to work and no one even knew I existed. Now, it seems, EVERYONE knows I exist and I’m constantly, you know, doing stuff. Not that I’m complaining. I love my job. It’s cool. I get to do some cool stuff. For instance, setting up company-wide webcasts. And updating the website.

Thursday was very hectic as I ran around getting stuff done. I guess folks like me because I do what I say I’m going to do. I try very hard to keep people happy and get everything done I’ve promised. But lately I feel like I’m being pulled in about a thousand different directions. I didn’t even have time to blink today.

My boss says I’m getting good visibility. I agree with her, but I still wish I could be totally anonymous. hehe

I’m in charge of organizing and setting up next week’s webcast. Plus, we’re recording the conference call portion so we can distribute it to the other offices so I’ve had to figure out how that all works. I did a pre-test to my test today. The pre-test involved Brother and Best Good Friend (aka sis-in-law). I recorded our teleconference session and webcast and then did a playback. I was shocked to hear myself talk – I have a really bad drawl. It’s awful! haha At any rate, I got everything organized and sent-out official sounding emails. I feel so important…NOT! LOL

Anyhoo… I want to share a really cool tool someone told me about. It’s Google Reader. Do you know about this handy thing? I didn’t. In fact, I was all too happy to get it all set up and use it. It’s for those of us who are blog readers and want to keep up with our friends and industry folks. I set up all my favorite blogs on the reader and then all I have to do it skim the list to see who’s updated. I can read it right there on the screen and if I want to comment, I just click on it and it pulls up the blog in a new window. I LOVE IT! It’s great! I highly recommend that if you keep up with 203498 blogs a day, log into Google Reader. You’ll need to set up an account on Google (but I already do so no big) and then just add your favs under Subscriptions. It’s cool!

Okay that’s it for me. I’m off to work!

I finished updating the sidebar on the blog! Yay!

Instead of having the books listed in the sidebar, they are now located on their own page. Isn’t that cool? The link is also at the top of the page of this blog. Also, I added an About section. I thought, you know, I should just in case someone from the outside world managed to hit my blog before hitting my website.

So what do you think of the new design? I have to say I really like it. It looks clean and tidy and I LOVE LOVE LOVE the coffee cups at each entry. It is SO CUTE!

This week was a monster. Monday and Tuesday were spent learning Flash in training – which was really great, actually. I thoroughly enjoyed the class. It was nice to get back to the office on Wednesday but I literally hit the ground running. I had to help get a proposal out the door and ended up working until 6. Raced home, cooked dinner on the grill, and then hung out with the kiddo the rest of the time. Thursday it was off to the dentist and then to work after. I got stuck in a meeting until nearly 7 so I didn’t get home until nearly 8! Man came over and we hung out until we both crashed. Well, I crashed, he managed to somehow stay up a while. Of course, he is a night owl.

Today…well, it was long. Had an excellent meeting today but didn’t get back to my desk until nearly 2. Then had lots of things to catch up on. After work, I got my hair cut. YAY! It feels – and looks – so much better.

This evening was quiet. I chatted on the phone for nearly an hour with Man (amazing, we see each all day yet we STILL manage to talk to each other for an hour on the phone!), and then chatted with a girlfriend for nearly an hour on the phone. I guess I was chatty tonight. Email chatted another friend for about an hour or so. And I still need to call my mother and chat with her.

Tomorrow morning is my monthly RWA meeting. And then sometime tomorrow I have to grocery shop (yuck) and THEN… I don’t know. The day is mine. I may do something wild like…go to the book store and get my free coffee. Yeah, I walk on the wildside all right.

Okay it’s off to bed now. Happy weekend!