A FREAKING HA!!! AHA!! AHA I SAY!

Okay, sometimes books go easy.  Sometimes they go hard.  Sometimes they start out one way, and switch to the other.

But usually, for me anyway, there is a point where you "hit bottom."  Nothing seems to be working.  It all just stalls.  I usually have a 'why do I do this again?' moment when I seriously consider hitting the delete button because 'it's all just crap.'

My son refers to this as the "STEP AWAY FROM THE COMPUTER" moment.  He has literally had to say that to me back in the days when he was a kid and lived at home.  Now I just hear his voice in my head--but it's just as effective.  (Even as a teenager he was a bass and had that 'voice of authority.')

IF YOU ARE LUCKY (and fortunately for me, I usually am.)  This is usually a sign of stress, illness and exhaustion.  If you are doubly lucky you can take a day or two and get some real rest and come back at it fresh.

BUT IF YOU GET A BLESSING (and believe me, this doesn't often happen) you will get one of those 'bolt out of the blue' moments and it will all just come to you:  fully formed.  All of it.  The answer, the phrasing, the new characters with their names and personalities, just this FLOOD of pure information and inspiration that pours into and through you.

When this happens you have to WRITE IT DOWN NOW.  As in RIGHT NOW before it all goes away.

I have had entire worlds come to me like this.  This is how I originally got Celia Graves and her world presented to me--in the dealer's room at a convention all those years ago.  Cathy was my co-author at the time and she took one look at me, saw it hit and said.  "GO up to the room.  Now.  Write it down before it's gone."  "But I need to . . ."  "I'll pay for the photo.  GO.  Now.  Before you lose it."

Cathy is a very smart lady.

Now I have been having a rough go of it lately.  The body has been seriously unhappy.  Life has been quite . . . lifish.  Compared to stuff other people have been going through I'm sure it's not so bad, but it's bad enough for me.  I even considered giving up on writing altogether--which just shows how bad it got because I LOVE writing.

I have gotten TWO, count them TWO (I just pictured the Count from Sesame Street doing my counting) bolts out of the blue in the past week.  The first was a new fantasy world with characters and the complete first novel plotted, politics, action, the whole thing, in one fell swoop.

The SECOND was the resolution to the Celia book I'd followed down a blind alley.  That happened this morning, after I took something for pain, forgot to set my clocks forward and slept myself out (thus missing church -- Sorry God.).

I got it all.  Everything.  In a big old data dump.  I put it all in my outline, put in all the notes, and got a start (at which point I left to go to church and found out that I'd missed it.  I made it just in time for the last blessing--which I need, obviously, although I figure I just got a big one.)

So, now I'm posting this, then I'm going home where I will write, and write some more, and more after that.

But ideas are coming to me again.  Which means I'm getting better.  The body is healing enough that the brain can actually do its thing.

HALLE FRACKING LUJAH!

Oh thank you God.