It has been too long!

Life has been lifish.  But you know it has been too long when you wind up having to change passwords to everything because you have been out of the loop so long you can't even remember them.

Also, I do not like sites that require me to list all of the people I know on them and send them contact emails etc.  Damn it, if they want to join, they know how.  Don't nag.  But one particular site won't even let me check my account unless I reveal all of that info, or uncheck everybody, and now it doesn't even let me uncheck easily.  UGH!

SO, despite the fact that it would be a useful site for job hunting in Denver, I won't use it.

I take privacy seriously.

I am happy, excited, and think things in my life are starting to move in the right direction again.

I am also seriously tired of all the dental problems that come from my clenching my jaw and grinding my teeth until they break.

But I'll get them fixed.  It's happening slowly, but it is happening.

And in the meantime, everybody be happy, be good.  I'll try to do better, but I'm in the midst of working the day job and on three or four different writing projects:

A)  Copyedits of next Celia Graves novel
B)  Second book in the Fae series
C)  Short story collection (currently in with the editor -- but I've got some more editing of my own to do also)
D)  Project novel for the writing class I was taking online to upgrade my skills.

Which leads to the direction I've decided I want this post to go.  Growth.

Writing, and life, requires growth and learning.  Change is a part of life.  If you accept it, and use your personal drive and free will to choose a direction, and take action, you will feel more in control (no one is ever in total control.  That is an illusion that will make you absolutely nuts.  Life will always throw you curve balls.  But like an ace batter, you have to be able to adjust and hit them out of the park).

If you keep working, learning, it keeps the mind limber.  It also makes your writing better.

And the good thing -- it's almost inevitable.  The more you write, the better you get.  And, if you're doing the job right, you have to do research for every book as well, so you're learning that stuff too.  Psychology, travel, what have you.  I think my favorite odd combination of things I had to study for a book was when I had to study royal weddings, wedding planning, and the drug tunnels between Mexico and the US for the same book.

This Celia novel I had to look up corporate jets--prices, flight ranges, air speed, and calculate the travel times between various destinations.  For novels with vampires you always have to be aware of sunrise and sunset times; for werewolves, lunar cycles are a biggie.  Mysteries (including the paranormal ones in said vampire or werewolf books) require knowledge of various weapons, police procedure, CSI techniques, and so much more.

Faking it is a recipe for disaster, too.  Much better to invest the time.

I am a better writer than I was when I started out.  I will be a better writer a year from now than I am now.  (Assuming I'm still alive.)  It's important.  But the good news is -- even while you're honing your craft, the STORY is still so important that, barring disastrous mistakes that make you want to throw a book across the room, it's going to carry you if you've reached the level of professionalism where you have a professional editor to help you keep said errors from occurring.  THANK GOD FOR EDITORS.  Really.  And I don't care how far you've come in your career, and how good you've become as a writer, you need them.  Because there's always time pressure.  And also, because, duh, you're HUMAN.  And it is really hard to remember stuff.  Particularly when there gets to be a lot of it.

Like for example, say um, wow, five books ago we visited Freddie the Vampire Slayer at his house in Middlesex England (We did do that, right?)  No, wait, didn't we change his name to Eddie and move him to London?  And what color was the couch?  The carpet?  How tall was he?  Wasn't he a chain smoker?  I seem to remember he was--he figured he'd die from his job way before cancer had a chance to do him in.  Do I want him to quit?  Be grumpy about it?

The use of a series "bible" is awesome at helping with some of this (the name, the location), but you're not going to have all of those details.  And it matters.  And while it is lovely and good to occasionally to go back and read your old stuff, ("Wow, this wasn't half bad." or "Oh shit, I DID that?" are either encouraging or instructive.) it is impossible when you get to the level of having written twenty books to re-read everything regularly and still have time to write.  Oh, I still keep one of each very handy and refer back--and I'm blessed with a good enough memory to know approximately where in which book to find what I need.  But it's HARD WORK.

And that is one of the big things about growth.  It's hard.  It is way more comfortable to sit around binge watching your favorite show of the moment (for me at the moment it is PERSON OF INTEREST) eating Cheetos than it is to actually get the work done.  But it doesn't GET THE WORK DONE.  You get rewards.  You HAVE to occasionally rest and refill the well.  But ultimately, the only thing that gets the work done is WORK.  Which I am now off to do.

Comments are welcome.  Spam isn't.  Lord only knows when I'll get back to the blog though.  It could be right away, or it could be months.  Write your comment and take your chances.  Like roulette.

My suggestion -- Rouge.