There are times when I’m *so* inspired to write that I’ll sit at my laptop and type for hours with this amazing, giddy feeling in my heart.

And then the other 98% of the time, I sit here and stare at my computer thinking, “ugh.. Do I really have to write right now?”

I *know* that if I can just get over that hurdle of the first 20 minutes or so, I can get into the flow of things and start feeling inspired as I immerse myself in the lives of my characters. But those first 20 minutes are so hard for me. Especially now when my days are frequently visited by the lame-fairy. (The Lame-Fairy? The Fairy of Lameness? Lady Lameness?)

Anyways. I’ve always been a bit of a procrastinator, but it was never that big a deal because I’ve always had deadlines and, procrastinator or not, I’m responsible and I get my work done. But now? There’s no teacher telling me that this book is due in X-number of weeks. There’s no boss telling me that I have to have X-number of pages completed by the end of the day.

And so, I slack.

A lot.

I feel like I need someone to “crack the whip” so-to-speak to force me to get my butt in gear. Any of you own a whip? (Please don’t answer that. Especially if you’re my mom or dad…) Ha

Yeah. I had several of them.

My brother (six years older than me) used to tell me that they moved around my room at night and watched me while I slept…

My response? The ever-effective, “Nuh uh!”

I was smarter than that!

So he dropped the issue and life continued on as normal. Except that the roof began leaking above my room and one or two of the ceiling tiles had to be removed!

I think you can all imagine my complete terror when one day, after leaving my room just for a minute to get something to drink, I come back to find several of those troll dolls, standing in a line all around the edge of one of those removed ceiling tiles, staring down at me…

I don’t think I’ve been the same since.

And it was glorious!

There was warm sun on my skin (because it was actually warm enough for short sleeves and bare feet!!)

But there was still a cool breeze blowing. The kind that fans your hair out behind you and sweeps it across your face and makes you feel like you’re in a movie.. or like you’re posing for the cover of a cheesy romance novel.. Except that I was dressed in baggy pajama pants and a plain white t-shirt, neither of which really scream “beautiful, captivating heroine.”

The air, even though it doesn’t quite smell like spring yet, was still really sweet and fresh.. until about 4:30 when it began to smell like whatever my neighbor was barbecuing (But that smelled good, too!)

Playing in my ears?

Mumford & Sons (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KCg_QEHtkY )

American Football (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OV0LJ0Dnl7A&feature=related )

Owen (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pb4eadeCtM0&feature=related)

And I had a pen in my hand and my nearly-ten-year-old diary in my lap, prompting almost FOUR. HOURS. of journaling. Yes, I said four hours!

The end result? Splotches of ink on my hands, what seems to be a permanent indentation on the middle finger of my right hand (from holding the pen), and FOURTEEN pages (front *and* back!!!!) of writing.

It wasn’t anything related to any of my stories but…

Wow.

It felt good

So, I grabbed my iPod, my camera, and my favorite blanket and headed out…. to the backyard!

I love sitting in the backyard.. it’s actually provided me with a lot of inspiration, especially for my “England Story” (check the “My Writing” page if you’re interested!) because Avery is the gardener at Cora’s father’s estate and they spend quite a bit of time outside together and, whenever I think of this story, I immediately imagine Cora and Avery sitting together on the old, stone wall that surrounds the garden, and I always imagine that the sun is going down as they sit there.

Is that cheesy? Probably.. but it’s what I picture when I think of this story! And sunsets in my backyard always remind me of it.

Basically, it began with me coming into my house and finding a parrot and a sea turtle in my living-room.

Yep.

And it ended with me discovering that someone had dug a basement underneath my house and they were running some sort of illegal sea-turtle-breeding operation out of it.

Your guess is as good as mine as to what any of that means!

That’s all I got for now. But I’ll probably be back later with something else.. hopefully something a little less random

But, for some reason, the spacing is being lame and every time I try to fix it, it just goes right back to being messed up.

I’m really sorry about that! Fortunately, it’s just the brief explanation/introduction that’s messed up and the actual manuscript samples are spaced properly.

I’ll keep messing with it and hopefully I can get it fixed!

HUGE thanks to everyone who has visited my blog on my first day back! I’d forgotten how exciting it is to check the stats page and look at my number of visitors

For those of you who were here the first time around, you’ll notice that I deleted all old posts (with the exception of the one you see below this!) in an attempt to start fresh.

Unfortunately, I currently find myself in a place where I’m really struggling with my writing and I’ve been neglecting it for weeks.. so, my solution? Blog like crazy!

I just need something I can have fun with and express myself with while keeping my mind and fingers nimble

When I first started this blog in 2008, I’d vowed to keep it strictly about writing/querying/publishing/etc. but it became much too hard for this unpublished writer to come up with new things to post about, which is why I eventually stopped! So, you know what? Totally throwing that idea out the window!

If I want to write about something related to my stories? Fantastic! But if I want to come blog about how I dreamt that I was on a sports team and that we were in a grocery store playing a game that involved using a frozen turkey as a football/hockey puck (FACT! Had that dream this morning!) then that’s cool, too! Or if I feel like coming and writing an essay about how I loathe velvet with the passion of 10,000 suns (Fact!) then I’ll do that, too.

Anything to keep my mind occupied and keep my writing juices from completely drying up like they’ve been threatening to do over the last few weeks!

Y’all (if you don’t know me and haven’t read my “About Me” page, yes, I’m from Alabama and, yes, I’m going to be saying y’all! ) are about to be seeing a whole lot of me on here.

Hope you’re ready.

Several months ago I came across the blog of Nathan Bransford – a literary agent in San Francisco and have been addicted to the site ever since.  He provides lots of great tips (especially in regards to finding an agent to represent your work, as well as tons of other useful stuff), and there is always a lively discussion in the comment section.

*And he now has a great message board available!!*

I have found the site to be extremely helpful so, if you’re at all interested in writing, I suggest giving it a look!

http://nathanbransford.blogspot.com/