Last night Hikaru got to deal with one of the fun perks of living with a writer: tolerating said writer’s late-night spaz-fits as he hops in and out of bed, running to the computer over and over again to jot down a few inspired lines of ‘genius’ only to retire to bed again.

And rinse and repeat for a few hours, each time with hasty apologies and promises that it’s the last time tonight.

Last night I finally hit that spark I needed for the beginning of Shadow’s Voice. I’ve been jotting down what I can here and there, but past history and experience with how I work have shown me that I need my introductory scene settled before I can make consistent progress on the story. It helps set the tone for what I’ll be writing later. I’ve been floundering on it, and while I had a basic idea of how I wanted it to start, what I’d come up with before was lackluster and missing a certain impact despite conveying what I’d intended.

So when the perfect opening line suddenly hit me last night, seeming to crack open my skull so a font of ideas and jumbled words could pour out, I couldn’t just go to sleep and let it wait until morning. By morning I’d have forgotten it, like a half-remembered dream where I know what happens but the electric clarity is gone (much like the original intro). Three or four times I ran out of bed to jot things down, add on to what I’d written before, and overall make sure I didn’t miss a thing. Even when I fell asleep my mind was still churning through things I wanted to add, but they were smaller things I felt safe saving until morning.

So this morning I dashed out of bed and, before even starting work, added a couple of pages of notes and dialogue outlines to what I’d started last night. Happy, energetic, I saved the work and moved on to start today’s client project.

Now lately my darling laptop, the apple of my eye, my main conduit to the outside world, my obedient little mechanical lapdog, has been misbehaving badly when I ask it to print certain things. By ‘misbehaving’ I mean ‘forcing me to hard reboot after all my programs hang, terminating processes helps nothing, and it won’t reboot through standard procedures.’ I’m thinking it may be time to backup my data and just do a wipe and clean install.

That won’t bring back what I lost this morning, though.

It crashed. It crashed, and it ate everything I’d done on Shadow’s Voice this morning, despite the fact that I know I saved as I wrote. In fact, I’m entirely neurotic about that. Every other sentence, Ctrl+S. Every day I even save new versions in case I delete stuff that I might want to reference later. What I wrote this morning should have been there when I rebooted, either in an auto-recover save or in my original file.

It wasn’t. And while I managed to mostly reconstruct what I’d written, I was still not happy.

~eyes his computer~ Why don’t you love me anymore? We cleaned out the giant ball of lint in your heat sink, I brushed out your keyboard, I got you a shiny new chill mat that keeps your processor nice and cool. Why you gotta hurt the ones who love you?

…okay, I’m done being a dork.

Yep, shaved him again. We keep bursting into giggles every time we see him.

We’re pretty much officially in the new place now. It’s still made of awesome. There’s a loose wire on the hot water heater, but that’s so, so minor compared to all the stuff wrong with the old place. We need to pick up a few things the movers didn’t get, tidy up the old place, and then drop off the keys and we’re done. If you haven’t seen the gorgeous pics, Hikaru has photos here, here, and here.

See why I’m in love?

Tomorrow I may finally be able to settle down after work to do some writing. It’ll be a quiet day with Hikaru out of the house; I need to read a bit of a WIP by Kerry, then I want to explore one of three concepts: Frost, Vagrant, or Rock Star. All three YA; Vagrant is magical realism, not quite urban fantasy, while Rock Star is just a teen story, no magic, no sci-fi. Frost is…uh…odd. Post-apocalyptic, fantasy with touches of sci-fi…not really high fantasy, not really urban fantasy. Something like Descending Light, but darker. And no dragons.

Not sure which one I’m going to work on; we’ll see what I’m in the mood for in the morning, and where it goes.

Problem is about halfway solved, and should be 99% gone by the end of the weekend.

Thanks to everyone who offered feedback and advice. You were immeasurably helpful.

Now back to packing. ~groans~ The movers will be here in four hours.

This has nothing to do with writing. It’s entirely unprofessional. It’s silly, it’s pointless, it’s probably a little stupid. And now, with that disclaimer out of the way to preserve my dignity and keep me from sounding like a lunatic…

…that had better be at the Chicago Comic-Con, too. And if it is, they may want to post armed guards around it, because you’d better believe it’s coming home with me otherwise. If you hear news of a crazy man who kidnapped Plastic Hugh Jackman, you know who it is.

(Is it bad that I basically imagine Roman looking like a young, pale Hugh Jackman?)

Hikaru and I are looking into adopting an adult cat from the local no-kill shelter; the more cats they find homes for, the more room they have to take animals from the kill shelters so they won’t be euthanized. There are three that are just luring us like you wouldn’t believe, but we can only have one. We could probably handle four in-home cats, but it wouldn’t be fair to Chathra (who has an appointment to get shaved again Monday, poor thing). He’s skittish enough without dumping three adult cats on him. We’ll have to be careful about socializing him to one. The one to the right is Lora; we probably won’t adopt her, but I want to. I just want to take her home and feed her until the skinny little thing just about pops, then cuddle her to sleep.

There are days when I wish I wasn’t human, so I wouldn’t feel jealousy. I’m happy to see other writers succeeding, and I can only hold on to the hope that if I keep trying and keep improving, I’ll get there one day. I’ll have the same experience they’re having. At the same time, though, an ugly side of me is jealous. Well, no…not jealous. Jealousy would mean I don’t want them to have those wonderful experiences, and I do. I just want to have them, too. So maybe “envious” is a better word. I want to share that success with them, not take it away from them. I suppose jealousy and envy are natural things to feel, but frankly I don’t like being that petty and strive not to be.

I know, that may seem hypocritical after this post. It’s not, I promise. I’m still being hopeful and positive. My pink kittens are emitting a great deal of sunshine from their nether regions, enough to give me sunburn. It’s a long road, and without hope and determination I’ll never get where I want to be. Sometimes I’m just a little envious of those who are already there. I think my pink kittens may be napping during those spells.

One day. Just have to be patient, keep trying, and keep writing the best stories I can. (Well, that and remember professionalism, etc. Writing is a luxury; publishing is a business, and you’ll never get anywhere if you aren’t polite, professional, and attentive to the requirements of the various people you hope to work with. No matter if it’s your dream, it’s also a job and should be treated that way.)

We’re almost done moving, and perhaps when we’re settled down I’ll be able to get back on a daily writing routine. I peck out a little on Shadow’s Voice now and then, but I probably shouldn’t push much on that until I find out if Shadow’s Breath will even sell. No point writing a sequel unless the first book works out. There are two others ideas I’m percolating on, Frost and Vagrant; once I get some free time I’ll have to take a stab at both and see which one grabs me. I go through so many story ideas it’s ridiculous, but then they aren’t all viable. Sometimes I have to play with them a little to see if they’re really worth writing.

Bah. I have to go finish work, then finish packing. This post has been brought to you by the letter P and the word Procrastination.

Unless you’re very experienced with them and your cat is very accustomed to them, don’t ever try those cat bathing bags.

Not unless you want a traumatized, half-strangled kitty, water everywhere, and scratches on every area of skin he can reach when he manages to get one area of the bag open, kick it off his body, then invert it so his head is stuck inside while he thrashes around in a hysterical panic.

Next time?

PetSmart groomers.

Oi; my poor baby.

The writing and publishing industry is an odd one. It’s full of fluctuations, many triumphs, and even more disappointments. The most important thing to remember when dealing with disappointment, though?

Never let it make you bitter.

No matter what cheerful face you put on, people will always be able to tell that you’re bitter, resentful, and angry at the status quo – and it will affect their perceptions of you, and their decisions about working with you versus working with your competition. If you’re going to be realistic, be realistic; anticipating failure in an industry with a 99.9% failure rate isn’t bitterness, it’s pragmatism. But there’s a line between pragmatism and bitterness, one fraught with sour temperaments, dire predictions, and a lot of whining. Don’t cross that line.

If you can’t be positive, calmly realistic, or the epitome of sunshine-farting pink kittens, then be silent. It’s better than venting your frustrations to the world. You never know when something you say might come back to bite you in the arse one day.