When Two Heads Are Better Than One

Check out today's Lust Bites column, written by yours truly and her dauntless coauthor Teresa. It's all about how we collaborate--something we get a lot of questions about! If we didn't answer them to your satisfaction, let us know!

Enjoy!

A Little Night Music cover!

Ooh! Lookie!

And what can I say to you to show how it feels?

Words Written: OOTFP edits
Writing Stats: caught up on the Lust Bites list
Exercise: hah

It’s a gloriously rainy, grey day, and yet it’s also one of those days where I feel like for every step I take forward, I’m sliding two steps back. One of those days where I hate e-mail, because people keep writing to me. I love it when people write to me, don’t get me wrong, but when they all need a response, and I’m already behind (still catching up from being away)…!

I guess there’s a part of me (the anal-retentive, moon-in-Virgo-or-whatever part of me) that wishes I had different e-mail addresses for all the different compartments in my life: friends & family, writing, Styx and Styxfest, SCA… But in the end, I’m sure that would drive me even more batty.

Do you all have days like that? Where you feel like you’re working and working but just spinning your wheels?

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Currently Reading: between books
Lately Listened To: Au Quebec, Home Field, Gowan
Recently Watched: CSI: Miami

But I thought I would say, I'm afraid I must disagree

Words Written: OOTFP 1210, edits
Writing Stats: Rejection from IGMS for “What Price Beauty?”
Exercise: does getting a 2-hour massage count?

So we did a candle making workshop on Saturday, and after we made a bunch of candles in Caidan blue for largesse, I made a bunch of different purple ones (rose-scented) for me. We also talked music, and our hostess, Mara, asked what three bands we wished we could’ve seen but never did. At first I drew a blank, because I’ve seen Styx 63 times so far, and what else is there? (Other than more!) But then I figured it out:

• Led Zeppelin
  
• Marillion’s Misplaced Childhood tour (which I could’ve seen, if only I hadn’t been distracted by a typo. My college newspaper listed a show in Montréal by “Silmarillion,” and I thought, “Nah, not the same band.” I found out the day after that it was. I’ve seen both Marillion with Steve Hogarth, and Fish solo, and while they were both fabulous, it wasn’t the same.)
  
• Any Gowan solo show in the ‘80s (Oh, to have met him when I was young and cute. Of course, when I was young and cute, I was mostly clueless about what to do with it. Sigh.)
  

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Yesterday I headed into the Valley in my spiffy new car for the LARA (LA RWA) meeting, where I accidentally volunteered to do a talk—but it won’t be ‘til the beginning of next year, which helps. It basically came from learning that the current speaker didn’t know about how to click to make the first page header of a document different from the rest of the headers. So I’ll be doing a “Word for Writers” talk, if they can swing a screen and hookup to a laptop. It shouldn’t be too very much work to set it up, I don’t think. Back when I worked at Sage Publications, when we switched from a DOS-based word processing program to Word, I taught a series of classes on “Word for Production Editors and Copy Editors,” and I’m sure I can pull some of that forward. I’m sure I have those files around here somewhere…

After that, the fabulous Christine and I headed to Lulu’s, where she met her hubby for lunch while I pulled up a chair at the writers’ table with the amazing Jenn and others. After Christine joined us, she and I booked our flights for RWA Nationals (so we could fly together, which is more fun!) and then settled down to work. Once I got going, the next scene in OOTFP just flowed. It’s times like that that make me especially love this crazy job.

In other writing news, I’ve made a somewhat difficult decision, although I’m feeling like a great weight has been lifted off me now that I’ve made it. I was slated to go to Seattle in May for a Novel Workshop, which meant I had to submit the novel by the beginning of April, as well as read two full novel manuscripts and about eight partials starting around the same time. When I first signed up, I thought I’d be working with DFL, but my heart’s just not in it…and then I was gripped by WSWL—only to discover that switching between light, comedic erotica and dark, menacing gothic romance was not working for me. And OOTFP has to be my first priority. That’s a promise I’ve made to my coauthor. So I finally accepted that I needed to give WSWL the time it deserved, not rush it for the workshop. (Not to mention the other things I have going on in May that will consume a part of my brain.)

So I’ll finish WSWL for the second quarter of the year, and all will be well. Teresa and I are on the last chapter of OOTFP, and it will be finished and winging its way to editors before the end of this month.

I can’t complain, really…

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Currently Reading: between books
Lately Listened To: RWA sessions
Recently Watched: The Dresden Files