erastes

Writing has been kicking my arse recently and making me feel guilty for every single day I’ve been goofing off—and I have been goofing off, no matter how many excuses I’ve been giving, like caring and editing and promotion and conferences and blah blah blah. I still have plenty of time to fire off 1000 words a day, but I’ve been stuck with a horrible aversion to even opening the files.

However, I started something today, which flowed and moved along and I found that I was LOVING writing it. As my regular readers will know I make most of my stuff up as I write, so I know nothing about my characters when I start to write them—even their names are XXXX until I’ve got a handle on them—so it was so pleasurable to have the character take shape on the page, and his possible amour, and then I introduced his mother and THAT’S when I remember just how much I loved writing because entirely out of the blue, as I was describing her dress, I knew her perfectly and what she was going to be like and I could see her and hear her and I loved her so much!

I don’t think I’ve had a mother in a book before, have I?

Oh yes, one, I think – Jonathan’s mother in Transgressions. And there’s a mother in I Knew Him, but there would have to be, considering the subject matter.

Anyway, it just goes to show that even in the slough of despond, things can make a U-turn.

On a related note, amusing story about how up and down this business is. A couple of days ago I had the most fabulous reader’s email from a gay man who had found Transgressions by accident and LOVED IT and raved via email for ages. Then I found a perfectly nice review of the same book where the reader said it was well written and researched and hadn’t worked for him, and I spent more time bashing myself regarding the latter issue than being happy about the former.

Authors are sick, sick people.