Patti O'Shea's Blog

I’ve never had writer’s block, at least not how I think of writer’s block. To me, it’s when no words come at all and that’s something I’ve never had to deal with. I do, however, have a problem finding the groove.

I love the groove! Sometimes I call it the zone, or an altered state or other things, but it’s when you fall into the book. The characters are talking, the scene is clear and I can’t type fast enough to keep up with what’s going on. I wish I could find this place immediately when I start a book, or if I have a book going, find it as soon as I open the file. When it’s coming fast and furious like this, I don’t stop to edit myself. It’s what I refer to as barfing on the page. Yeah, pretty image, I know, but I’ve been using this term for years because it fits perfectly.

The last three months writing In the Midnight Hour were like this, but I deserved it because I fought and fought and fought through the first two months of this book. I have the bruises to prove it.

That’s where I’m at right now with my new book. I’m slogging my way through brambles and struggling to get what I see in my head down on the page. It’s ugly. I’ve trashed everything I’ve written more than once. But while I’m pulling the words out of myself one agonizing sentence at a time, I’m also hopeful that today will be the day I find the groove again. Writers are either masochists or eternal optimists–I’m not sure which.

I’m still looking for some magical way to skip this part and just jump into the groove. It’s torture, the most miserable point in a book, and yet I do it over and over and over again. When the writing is like this, it’s real easy to find other things to do–like cleaning. Or mah jong. Or surfing the net. Anything is more fun.

I was talking to a friend last night and she has the same problem. It made me curious if any writer avoids this place of struggle and procrastination or if we all suffer through it. Does anyone jump right into the groove and never fall out of it? Is there some way to put yourself in the groove without the days/weeks/months of struggle? I’d love to hear tips on how to avoid (or shorten) this stage. So far the only thing I’ve found is to just keep writing until I clear it.

I like to collect quotations that I think are cool or that speak to me in some way. Before I sold my first book, I used to include a quote at the bottom of each email as a signature. Now, of course, my signature line is my current and upcoming books. I’m on a board, though, that’s very small and intimate and they know me and when my books are coming out, so I use a quote there. Right now, I’m posting with:

“Maybe this world is another planet’s hell.” – Aldous Huxley

I’m not using that quote because I feel negative, I’m using it because I find the concept intriguing. And wouldn’t it make an interesting story premise? I have no ideas or plans to use it, at least not right now, but it still makes me wonder what if?

So my plan for today’s blog post is to share some of the quotes I’ve seen online and share them. And yes, that means I couldn’t come up with anything particularly interesting to say today and I’m relying on other people.

“Everyone has a talent; what is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.”–Erica Jong

“You will never find time for anything. If you want time you must make it. ” – Charles Buxton

“Now and then it’s good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.” ~Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918)~

“The faintest ink is more powerful than the strongest memory.” –Chinese Proverb

“Competing in sports has taught me that if I’m not willing to give 120%, somebody else will.” –Ron Blomberg, baseball player

“None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free.” –Goethe

“Life is like a game of cards. The hand that is dealt you represents determinism; the way you play it is free will.” –Jawaharlal Nehru, first prime minister of India

“The weirder you’re going to behave, the more normal you should look. It works in reverse, too. When I see a kid with three or four rings in his nose, I know there is absolutely nothing extraordinary about that person.” — P. J. O’Rourke

“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson~

There you go, some thoughts for the day. Now I have to go get ready for my chapter meeting. I missed September, so I’d like to get to this month’s gathering.

I got my new phone yesterday! I needed one for my bedroom since it’s on the opposite side of the house from the other two phones. Best Buy tried to sell a maintenance agreement on a $12 phone! Say what? At that cost, if the phone has a problem, I think I can manage to buy a new one. Good grief.

Anyway, I put batteries in it and tested it out–only the caller ID function didn’t work. My dad was over because he plans to put up my pictures today (I’ll believe it when I see it) and he wanted me to tell him where to put them. So I call him over and I’m like, it doesn’t work. His first question? Do you have all the batteries in the right direction? I was like, of course I do! There are little pictures on the inside of the battery case. How hard can it be to put them in correctly?

Apparently harder than it looks. After much testing, he opened the battery case and pulled them all out. Yep, two of the four batteries were the wrong direction. Sigh. I’m blaming it on exhaustion. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Amazing, how nicely the caller ID function worked after that.

We also have post it notes on my great room wall denoting where I want the pictures to go. It’s actually kind of funny. My dad brought a stud finder over, we found several, and after I finally make a decision (because the studs weren’t located where I wanted the picture centered so I had to compromise), he says he won’t have to put holes in the wall because he has these hanger things. Um, then why were we looking for studs if we don’t have to anchor the pictures into them?

He also has plans to put in my magnifying mirror and the shower rod in the guest bath. I really am hopeful that he’ll get these things done (July 2nd! That’s when I bought the mirror), but I’m not going to bet big on this.

While I’m talking house stuff, and I have enough time to do it, here’s my Scooby Doo clock. This isn’t something I would hang in the main part of the house, where people could see it, but in my bathroom, it’s kind of cute. (Walls are green, BTW, although more of a mint, rather than the bright green of the flowers.)

In writing news, I still have one place where I want to add a couple sentences explaining why Deke was called that and not Dan, but otherwise I finished revising on the name thing. Most of it was find and replace, but there were a few places where they say something about names and I needed to change those with actual writing.

I received my revision letter for In the Midnight Hour yesterday. Not all of them–there will be more to follow–but getting part of them was a huge relief. Especially since my editor included all kinds of compliments about the story and my writing! We writers really, really love to hear things like that. Of course, I can only speak for myself, but I can’t imagine anyone feeling differently.

The biggest change I had to make (so far) was my hero’s real name and what my heroine calls him. This was actually okay, since my hero doesn’t use his real name, doesn’t even think of himself by that name. Everyone has always called him Deke. If I’d been asked to change the Deke, that might have been a problem, but changing his real name–Deke just shrugged. He didn’t care. His name was Irish, Daire (think diacritical mark over the a), he’s now become Daniel, but he was called Deke because his dad was Dan. I did a search and replace, but now I’m going through, looking for little things that have to be adjusted. There’s a scene in LA that I want to change to explain how Deke got his nickname as a baby.

Then there’s what my heroine calls him. Daire is pronounced Daw-ra, so she called him Daw in the book. Or she did. Thanks to find and replace, she now calls him Deke too. This was actually something I debated for more than a week once I sold Midnight Hour and started writing it again–what she was going to call him. I was this close (holds fingers a quarter of an inch apart) to having her call him Deke, but I stayed with Daw, but both me and Ryne were both ambivalent about it. It really helps when the characters are cooperative.

So I worked on this yesterday instead of writing new stuff and I think this was beneficial, not just because I was getting my revisions done, but because it reminded me of things about the Gineal that I’d forgotten. Since my next book involves Ryne’s sister, this is a good thing. There was also a very useful discussion on one of my loops involving writing a series. What I got out of it was that notes are invaluable. So that’s what I’m going to do as I read through Midnight Hour–make notes. I use some Gaelic words, so I’m writing those down as I come across them and I have to remember to write down other important points. I have loose leaf paper, a ton of three-ring binders and if I can get my hands on some tab dividers (I’m sure my dad has some), then once I have notes, I can separate them out by book, by character, by culture–whatever works best.

Actually, notes would have come in handy while I was writing Eternal Nights. I can’t tell you how much I’d forgotten from Ravyn’s Flight, and I spent a lot of time thumbing through RF, looking for details.

I don’t know how I lost so much time this morning, but it’s 4:45 and I only have 15 minutes to blog! Usually it takes me 25 minutes or so to write here. Yeah, I know, most of my posts usually don’t look like it took me more than 5 minutes to write them, but they really do. Maybe because I’m always so tired in the mornings. Shrug.

I also took a picture of my Scooby Doo clock yesterday, cropped it, reduced the size to something manageable and uploaded it. But I don’t have time to go to the site, get the code and post it here. It’s the dial up thing. By the time the page for the other site (medium on the graphic intensity scale) comes up, I login, my page comes up, I copy the code, etc, it’ll be much later than I’d like. You see, it’s raining here this morning and that means I need to be out of the house early or I won’t make it to work on time. I have to move getting high speed up the To Do List. This is really getting ridiculous.

So what do I have to talk about today? Not much. I had to stay late at work yesterday because I left early on Monday to go to the dentist. It shocked me that traffic was better at 3:12 in the afternoon than it is at 2:30. The day job is still mind numbing, my obnoxious coworker is still obnoxious and Loud Vendor Guy showed up yesterday, giving me the daily double on the noise-factor scale. I tried to start my new story on lunch, but struggled. I can see the scene–kind of–but I was worrying about action and the word choices I was making and I ended up getting bogged down in the fact that I needed more active words. It didn’t matter how many times I told myself it could fix it later, I wanted it right the first time. I’ll try again today.

I think I’m going to stop here since I don’t have anything much to say today. I’m wearing my winter jacket and hat and bringing my mittens to work. I can’t tell you how thrilled I am.

I hung my Scooby Doo clock in the bathroom last night. I know, but it’s a cool clock. Very 70s kitsch. If I think of it, I’ll take a picture so you can see just how cool it is. Somehow, I managed to get it perfectly centered on the wall too–without measuring! It’s a little hard to gauge the time, though, since there are no numbers, but hey, it’s Scooby! Hanging him made the bathroom feel just a tiny bit homier and he also hides the part where I kind of ripped a tear into the top layer of sheet rock. Now, if I could just get my dad to install my magnifying mirror….sigh.

I also started hooking up my desktop computer last night. I rarely use it so this wasn’t high on the priority list after the move. Oh, sure, there were a few times it was inconvenient, but not bad enough to force me to battle that mess in my office. Last night, though, I was exhausted from a weekend with little sleep and my mouth hurt from a trip to the dentist. Perfect time to tackle a gazillion cords. :-/ I’m not quite sure what I was trying to hook the monitor cord into on the back of the computer, but it didn’t fit. It was blue, though, matching (or close to matching) the blue on the cord. I finally did find the right hookup.

Making this whole thing more challenging were all the boxes under the desk, next to the desk, around the desk. I really need to unpack those, but I have to go through them first–and find somewhere to put the stuff. I don’t have enough storage. And I can’t really put everything out yet because I’m still waiting for the blind store to come back with my curtain rods and hardware.

Anyway, I think my revising of the proposal is done. I heard back from one of my writing buddies, she didn’t see any plot holes. If my other writing buddy gives the thumbs up, I’m printing this thing out and mailing it back to my agent. I have to get going on my next book–Creed and Maia beckon.

PS: It’s 37 degrees here. I’m cold and I don’t like this.

As I was waiting for coffee yesterday morning, I noticed that Asian beetle was still on the ceiling next to the light. Hmm. I come up with what I believe to be a brilliant idea. I’ll get my Swiffer sweeper, knock it to the floor and step on it. I put on shoes, I get my sweeper, I attempt to knock the bug. I missed on the first couple of swipes, but the ceiling is high and it was a stretch to reach his location even with the sweeper thing. Finally, I knock it. I follow it’s descent, prepared to leap into action.

I forgot these beetles can fly. In my defense, it was morning, but still, you think that might have occurred to me at some point, yes? Anyway, the thing is freaking out, flying into the ceiling over and over and over again. Coffee finishes, I turn to get my caffeine and when I turn back, the beetle has disappeared. Now, somewhere inside my house, I have both a beetle and a box elder bug.

This wasn’t the highlight of my day. That was going to Target. I adore Target and try to limit my trips there because it’s easy to ring up incredibly large totals in a short period of time. I needed a new phone. I have two, but they’re both on the other side of the house, and when I’m in the bedroom, it’s turned out to be a long distance to go before voice mail picks up. Do you think, though, that I could find a simple, corded phone? I’m not even talking with caller ID, I mean any simple, corded phone? Of course not. It was all cell phones and cordless phones. I did, however, find a ton of other stuff I needed.

I have storage now for all the cleaning supplies that I’d tossed on the shelf in my laundry room closet. Since this is also my closet just before I go outside, this was not good. They’re now all in a clear box on the shelf. I have a tray for my boots so the snow doesn’t melt onto my closet floor and I have a caddy for all the cleaning sprays.

It looked pretty good. I admired everything for a while after I put it away and then I went to work. Um, still no ending and the giant asteroid crashing into Earth seemed a little extreme as a conclusion to a novel. I had maybe 2 pages left to write in the synopsis, so at this point, knowing how the book is going to end was critical. I wrote a couple of sentences. I decided to test out the cleaner I’d bought to get the marks off my walls. (It worked slick as spit!) I tried to work some more, checked to see if anyone had friended me on My Space, decided to use the new hooks I’d bought to mount my calendar and clock.

I put up the hook in the computer room. That went well. I went to take down the old hook for the clock. That didn’t go well. It was one of those “don’t do anything to your wall” hooks? Well, guess what? It took off a layer on my sheet rock. Fortunately, I noticed before it ripped the piece completely off and my dad thinks he can fix it with glue. (I had to put in an emergency telephone call.)

Okay, now I better work before I tear my house apart. I think I had a sentence, maybe two, down before I decided I had to clean the bathroom. Heck, I didn’t just clean one bathroom, I cleaned both of them. That’s when I realized I was in heavy avoidance mode. You see, cleaning the bathroom is my least favorite thing to do. That I found it more fun than writing should give you an idea how bad my day was.

I hate synopses. I hate writing synopses. Why isn’t “and then some stuff happens and it all works out and they live happily ever after” a valid synopsis?

But it’s worse than just writing a synopsis. I was revising a synopsis. My scathingly brilliant original conclusion to the story had a huge logic flaw. The problem was that there was no good ending that fit the characters and the agency and the story. I finally had an idea somewhere around 3:50. Yes, I managed to procrastinate nearly all day. I emailed it to my writing buddy. I felt hopeful for the first time in a long while. Maybe this would work.

I was checking email at my parents’ house when she shot that idea full of holes. And no, the synopsis still wasn’t done, even with the unworkable idea. But while I was over there, I thought, what if? I emailed her this idea and she thought it would work, but that Tyler, the hero, wouldn’t go along with it. I was like, aha, but he isn’t going to know until well after the fact! Now, I have an ending.

I got home around 7pm. I finished the synopsis at 9:50 and went to bed. Now I wait for reaction to the new version. I’ll review it today too and make sure I’ve addressed all my agent’s concerns. Hopefully, this is done so I can print it out and send it back to NYC. It’s time for me to get to work on my next story. Creed and Maia. I’m looking forward to it because they’re both finally talking to me.

Yesterday morning, I was minding my own business–drinking coffee and making my morning internet rounds–when it happened. It was a picture on one of the sites that did it. The shot? A tribal tattoo on the small of a woman’s back. That’s when she came. Yep, another character showed up.

In all fairness, I knew there was a woman hanging around the fringes of my consciousness for a while now and I knew she was at least part Polynesian, but she was staying in the background and not bothering me, so I was content to let her remain there. After all, I’ve got plenty of other characters hanging around my head right now and they’re all high on the priority list. Why did she put herself front and center? That damn tattoo was the trigger. She has one just like it in the same location.

I’m not exactly sure who this character is or which story she belongs to. She claims that she’s Z’s heroine (the third book in the J9 proposal that I’m still trying to find time to finish), but she lied to me about a few other things and I can’t trust that she’s Jas. However, I was forced to look for a picture of her. Do you know how slow dial up is when looking for pictures? I had a hard time even coming up with search parameters to find potential images.

I think she’s Tahitian, which means she’s probably been hanging around since the beginning of June because when I wrote Dark Awakening (novella in the Shards of Crimson anthology), Mika and Conor were in Tahiti and unavailable to help Kimi.

Anyway, that shot my all day writing marathon in the foot. And yes, I know, I could have done my writing and looked for pictures of her after I was finished, however, I’m not that disciplined, and besides, I still don’t have a new ending for the proposal I’m revising. Everything else is done now except for the last couple of pages of the synopsis. I told a friend that I plan to have an asteroid crash into Earth, causing most of the species (including humans) to become extinct. The End.

Last night, I was sitting in the great room, working and watching the Dodgers lose, when I hear this noise. I’m like what is that? I put the laptop down and get up to investigate, trying to pin down exactly where it’s coming from and what it is. As I moved away from the couch, I zeroed in on its location. I look up at the vaulted ceiling, specifically at the recessed light almost directly above my head and I see it. A box elder bug is attacking the light. The noise I was hearing was its shell hitting glass. Since this is also the light almost at the top of the vaulted area, there’s no way I can kill him. I shift position for another angle, and what do I see? A weird bump on my ceiling. I shift some more. Not only do I have a box elder bug dive bombing the light, I also have an Asian beetle parked next to it. On the ceiling. Too high to reach. Argh!

Now I have to figure out a plan of attack because I don’t want to be living with these things indefinitely. This morning, the beetle was still next to the light fixture and I don’t know if its ever coming down. The box elder is nowhere to be found.

There is a wonderful article about romance books and their readers at: Desire Surges for Romance Novels! Romance seems to take a bashing so many times in the media, so when a positive, well-written article is posted, it’s cool to share!

And yes, as you can tell from the title here, I’ve still been playing with glitter. Here’s my latest effort. What do you think?

I’m getting faster at it, but that also makes me want to create more and more graphics. I can’t, though–too much work to do.

So I promised a movie review. Underworld 2. I think the subtitle was Evolution, but I’m not sure and I already have the disk sealed up to go back to NetFlix. Um, I wasn’t paying strict attention to the story since I was learning to make glitter fonts while it was on, but the gist of it is that one evil son of the first vampire is trying to free the other evil son and the key is the heroine because her father had built the prison hundreds of years earlier.

Overall, I liked the first Underworld more than this one. Underworld 2 was really gory and I’m pretty squeamish so that was a problem for me. The romance between the hybrid Michael and the Vampire played by Kate Beckinsale was pretty much non-existent, although there was a few moments while they were in bed together that were pretty good. I’d have liked to have seen more of the relationship explored and less of the blood and guts.

My rating: 3 stars
I liked it, but didn’t get all excited the way I did about Underworld 1.
Next up on my NetFlix queue is Transporter. Heaven only knows when I’ll get around to watching that after it arrives.

My phone line was finally switched over to the buried cable yesterday, believe it or not! Considering the length of time that thing sat in the yard, I was thinking it would still be there next spring after the snow melted. Now the cable company just needs to get theirs taken care of.

You’ll probably end up thinking, um, no, you really didn’t have to share this, but hey! I’m so darn proud of myself, I can’t help it. You see, I’m art/craft challenged, and when I do anything along these lines that turns out well, I’m elated. Here’s my latest project:

You don’t want to know how long I worked on this. Really. And even if you do, I’m not admitting to nothing. It’s Friday. I did laundry. I watched a movie (which I’ll attempt to review tomorrow). I found a tutorial for glitter fonts. It’s been a busy night.