Not ten minutes later, my brain coughed up a scene and a plot complication for the mystery novel I put on the back burner several months ago.

Dear voices in my head,

I appreciate your enthusiasm, and I most heartily sympathize with your desire to get back to producing fiction as quickly as possible. However, allow me to remind you that we have just written a rather lengthy nonfiction tome, and will be dealing with revision requests for some weeks to come. If you could please knock it off for a week or so to allow us a little rest, that’d be great.

Even a day or two would be most welcome.

Sincerely,
Mgmt.

I mean, come ON.

I didn’t get to sleep until 4 a.m.

Me? Well, I was sick for a while there. No, not hamthrax. Not even a virus, really; turns out the stuff I was on for back pain had some unlisted side effects. I’m better now. Except that my back hurts. Oh, and I’ve had a cold for two weeks.

Also, I was traveling a lot. I don’t know what I was thinking, but I wound up going to ArmadilloCon, FenCon, HighEdWeb, and World Fantasy all in quick succession, with side trips to San Antonio and Waco in between. One more big trip this weekend, to An Event Apart in San Francisco, and then I’m done.

And, you know, I’ve been busy. I’m frantically finishing up all my freelance projects because I have a book deal.

No, not for a novel. Don’t get too excited. Just a little excited.

I’m writing a book on WordPress! It’ll be out next summer from Apress, and I’m slanting it more toward CMS use than blogs, because, you know, WordPress is good for that sort of thing.

Look! It has a cover and it looks real and stuff! And it’s on Amazon and everything! That’s right: if you search for me on Amazon, you will find stuff.

OK, I’m a little excited.

So, you know, if you don’t see me around much for the next few months, I’m not dead… I’m just on a deadline.

Which has trees like this:

And today I’m back in the hotel for RWA National. Follow that for live tweets from the conference. Already this morning there have been separate hashtag discussions for the Rogue Digital panel on e-book publishing (which all my followers were treated to at oh-dark-thirty) and the annual general meeting, at which some big changes are being proposed.

Yeah. That’s my idea of a good day.

I know it won’t last. Very soon I’ll be sick to death of these people and their tiresome little dramas. But at the moment, it’s great. It’s the honeymoon phase. (That other project? Oh, we’re separated. The odds that we will reconcile are getting slimmer by the minute.)

It’s an old project really because I’m finally reworking the story I sent in to Viable Paradise… eight years ago?! Good Lord. Anyway, there were two consistent themes to the critiques I received: it needed to be a novel instead of a short story, and I really needed to read more Regency fiction before attempting to rewrite it. At the time — oh, my naive younger self! — I was mostly unaware that there was an enormous body of fiction centered around the time period I’d chosen, and that these novels had a set of conventions I’d unwittingly trampled.

It was bad, y’all. I’ve looked over that draft. Ye gods, it was bad.

When I got home, I tidied the critiques into a big stack of paper, shoved them into a box in the closet, and for the most part succeeded in putting the story out of my mind. Occasionally I’d get a little blip (“hey, if throw that guy into it, I can do this…”) which I’d tuck away into my little file of notes before getting on with life. Life now included reading a lot of Regency novels, among other things. I love them; I’m so glad I blundered into that period, even if I’m now embarrassed as hell over that early draft.

Apparently I have finally internalized enough of them. Over the weekend, an outline for the entire novel-length version of the story dropped into my head. It’s sprouted a new character who’s now central to the action. A character I’d originally killed off now gets to live (another wise bit of advice from the VPers).

I’m not looking at the old draft. I don’t think I’ll try to salvage anything out of it. This version has the same atmosphere and general outline as the old one, but this time I actually feel like I know what I’m doing.

That feeling won’t last either, but in the meantime it’s nice.

Books

Specific books — things you think your writer might enjoy — a bad choice in most cases. We’re picky as hell. We have piles of books we intend to read that we haven’t gotten around to. We also have weird research interests; the books we need are often obscure and/or hard to explain. And our taste in books is very different from other readers’ because we can’t turn off our mental editors, and we’re constantly nitpicking the things we read. The bestseller you love? Your writer probably can’t stand the author’s style.

Gift cards to bookstores are always welcome. There is never enough money in the world for all the books writers need; this gift never gets old.

Exceptions: if your writer has given you a list of wanted books, or keeps a wish list on Amazon, go for it.

If you’re sure your writer doesn’t have a copy of The Unstrung Harp, Or Mr Earbrass Writes a Novel ($10 at Amazon), it’s one of the few books most writers — at least, writers seeking publication — will enjoy.

Reader stuff

Writers start out as readers, and we stay readers forever — even if we have less time for it as we spend more time writing.

Reading pillows ($20 at BasBlue or you can make your own) with pockets for bookmarks and reading glasses.

Thumb Thing for holding books open while you take notes, feed the baby, whatever.

Shelves

What’s better than books? Places to put books! Umbra makes awesome shelves: the Conceal shelf and the Flybrary. My local Bed, Bath & Beyond carries them.

Bookzup book easel ($5) or office-style stand is great for hands-free reading and note-taking.

Notebooks and Pens

Writers always want writing supplies, right? Wrong. Ix-nay on the fancy stationery. Writers are a neurotic bunch, and most of us feel like pretty notebooks are too nice for us to scribble in. Really.

Exceptions: ink refills for fountain pens, if you know what kind of pen your writer uses and which ink s/he wants, and Moleskine notebooks, if you know your writer uses them or needs a small notebook to carry around.

Sparklies

Typewriter jewelry ($36-110 at Uncommon Goods) for men and women: cuff links, bracelets, necklaces, earrings.

Banned book bracelets and necklace ($15-30 at Amazon). I have the bracelet; it never fails to elicit comments.

What else? Writers, add your wish list (or the things you dread receiving) here!

More, more, more!

ETA: more gifts for writers, via Emma Bull: literary action figures, more jewelry, bookends, bookmarks, sealing wax, the personal library kit I love but have never been able to justify given that I use Delicious Library… on and on.

I have design ideas for all three of the websites I’m currently scheduled to work on. Hooray!

I have zero ideas for the novel. Nada. Zilch. The next sixty thousand words are a vast wasteland, as are the next sixty. Perhaps I can manage six….

Michael is muttering to himself as he goes back and forth between his textbook in the dining room and his laptop in his study. No, I don’t know why he does not simply consolidate these two areas. I think fluid mechanics have shorted out his brain.

I tried out CakePHP at work today. I think I like it. In fact, I think it might be made of pure awesome, but I’m too green to say for sure. I’ve never worked with the MVC patten before, so I’m having to learn that and Cake’s syntax at the same time. Tomorrow I go in search of examples more complex than the blog demo in the manual but with more context than the code posted in the Bakery. I mean, thank you, author of the LDAP auth code. I need that. I just have no idea yet how to use what you’ve handed me.

Off to find six words.

The new novel is up to 16K already but likely to hold there for a while, since I rarely get any writing done while traveling.

I should probably think about packing now.

Where did the summer go?

ETA: A handy graph, all color-coded and shit, via Tobias Buckell. Check out that eggplant-shaded sliver.

ETA2: Original thread now contains Nebula numbers too.