This might be a manifesto

Yeah, I might have to nail this one to the cathedral door when it's done.

Today is the official release date of Shorn by Larissa N. Niec: the first book published by my brainchild, Mercury Retrograde Press. I'm immeasurably proud of the work we've done on this one--and it *has* been a "we", because in addition to the writer, any book must also have an editor, a proofreader, a typesetter/book designer, a cover designer, one or more artists, and people whose task it is to get the word out so people can fall in love with the creation and make its story part of their personal myth set. Shorn has had--still has--a whole team behind it. Because we're a new press, and we can't afford to hire full-time employees yet, I've done the majority of the work on this project, and for the most part I find the work fulfilling; but in the race to do this book justice, I have mostly set aside my own writing life. This is a thing I've viewed as a temporary necessity; in my mind, once we crossed the finish line on Shorn, things would calm down and I could get back to the study with a clear conscience.

I now understand that was unrealistic. There is still work to be done for Shorn, and the work will continue for a couple months yet: getting the word out, setting up relationships with new sales channels (a task for which I'm hugely grateful, btw), propagating the ebook versions and beginning to figure out the logistics of audio book production. Meanwhile Anointed, the next book on Mercury Retrograde's menu, is already waiting for me to start doing my share of what it needs; by the time that's done, I'll be behind on the next one. (And, oh, you're going to LOVE the next one, but there are still nagging legal entanglements that must be resolved, so for now I must leave you to fantasize. Two words to start with: Urban Fantasy.)

The bottom line: I am never going to be *caught up* on Mercury Retrograde business, at least not until Mercury Retrograde can afford staff. That's normal for a start-up business, and I've done the whole start-up thing before, so while I'm not uncomfortable with the headlong dash and all the other stuff that goes along with it, now that we're in a Mercury Retrograde period, my muse is crying for time in the study...and suddenly I remember that I founded Mercury Retrograde because the house I wanted to publish my own fiction didn't exist yet. It exists now, and I love it; but if I publish six, nine, or twelve books per year that win the hearts of critics and fans alike, earn out and go on to make money for their authors, and yet I am not writing fiction, I will not have done what I set out to do.

It is never going to be a convenient time for me to go back to writing; so long as I am writing, things will move more slowly in the office than they otherwise might. But it occurs to me that, while I refuse to hold other Mercury Retrograde authors to hard deadlines when meeting those deadlines would require them to compromise their art, I'm giving my own work no such respect. That has to stop.

So, while Mercury Retrograde Press authors and fans may wish I could move a little faster in the office, I trust they will understand that I must go back to carving out regular time in the study. No book will go unedited, un-typeset, or unpromoted; it's just that schedules will be a bit more fluid than they've been. In the long run, I suspect, all of Mercury Retrograde's books will benefit.

In the mean time, I have to go back to the study.

On Writing--Or Not

I am not writing right now. I cannot express how much this pains me; the writers among you will understand. It's not that I'm *blocked* or that I don't know what to write--it's that I can't find the time. I'm in a crunch period that began about two weeks ago and is likely to run two more, and I don't even have time to make dinner consistently or return phone calls not related to work (and I'm really sorry about that, btw. You know who you are.)

It's work, of course. The beautiful business of publishing. I am still the person responsible for most everything Mercury Retrograde does, and I don't want to complain about that: this is my brainchild, and I love the work. Well, except the filing and bookkeeping. In case you haven't heard, we have a book scheduled for official release on October 1st, and we are busily finalizing final things, scheduling Larissa's book tour, and doing truckloads of publicity. All very important and enjoyable stuff, and in many cases the first time I've done the things in question--which means there have been false starts and mid-course corrections, and just generally that things have taken longer than they will for the next book and the one after that. I understand all this, and it's not so hard to be philosophical about it, because I love the work.

But just the same there is a certain defrocked wizard on the verge of getting sucked into things it will take him years to fully understand, waiting for me in the study...and I know exactly what the next hundred pages should be. It's hard to be patient.

Must dig in and make the final push, down here in the office. Soon there will be things to read and see: a book, details of an author tour, a new Mercury Retrograde website, Mercury Retrograde's close-to-finalized catalog for next year. Right now it's insanity on the inside and pretty boring from outside. I'll be back in the study soon.

Staying the Course

It's been a challenging day in the study: I won't say difficult, because that would imply things didn't go well, and ultimately they did. But getting there wasn't as easy as it might have been.

It's been a few days since I wrote: I had that big birthday weekend, and a heavy week leading up to it, and the rhythm I like to maintain in the study just wasn't there. That tends to spell trouble for me in the getting-started-on-the-page department, and even though I knew what I was going to write today, that's exactly what happened. For a couple hours things just didn't flow; I felt as if what I was writing was stilted and boring (and as you know, Bob, if *you* are bored with what you're writing, your audience has already turned on the TV); the phone kept ringing, with calls I had to take. During my less confident days as a writer, I would probably have concluded I was (ack!) blocked, let myself off the hook, and hoped tomorrow was better and the block was just a passing thing rather than the descent of True Creative Paralysis.

But I knew that the paragraph I was writing was there to set up data I needed in play, and that all I had to do was keep it short and move on; and I knew that, if I would just stick with it, I would become unstuck, and the words would start flowing. Because, if you are patient with yourself and you're honoring your characters, they will. So I stayed the course: accepted that I would be getting to my afternoon deliverables later than I'd hoped, but required myself to hang in there.

Now, I didn't chain myself to the desk: I wandered off and made myself some lunch, and shuffled laundry into the washer, the dryer, the piles of folded clothes; I sat down in the kitchen and read a book while I ate , and took my time with it. But then I went back to the study, and just slogged through another couple of paragraphs--and then Lesle walked through the door of the room where the action I'd planned was going to happen, and she and Edward started talking about things that needed to be discussed, and I forgot about feeling stiff. The muse just did his thing, and when next I looked up, the chapter was complete.

Those of you who follow the play-by-play around here may remember that just last week I was speaking out against the prevalent belief that one must produce at a consistent rate; this may seem as if I'm contradicting myself. I don't think so: what I'm saying is not that we must produce n pages per week or per day (although goals are useful)--but that we must be both patient and brave during those moments when we walk into our writing places with ideas we want to pursue, and it doesn't go easily. What's easy in those moments is to declare ourselves blocked, broken or inadequate as artists. What we need to do is be patient with ourselves.

producing at a consistent rate

One of the precepts of writing I hear most often concerns the absolute necessity of producing consistently. I don't do that; I can't. I do have goals; right now, I'm trying to write 1000-2000 words per day, which is not unreasonable when I'm writing regularly. But yesterday I didn't write more than a few hundred: I just finished that last scene.

It's not that I didn't have time to spend in the study; it's that I had to stop and think. That scene was the end of a chapter, and I am switching between my PoVs by chapter--and while I've known for quite some time what the plot points of this next chapter will be, it wasn't until I'd written through the last one that I could plan the part of this chapter that matters. Because as far as I'm concerned, it's not what *happens* in this chapter that matters, but what it means to the characters.

In my view, plot only satisfies when it is a vehicle for character. I believe the stories that matter are about characters, not events. The events are critically important: they are the things that force the character to reveal himself, to grow and change. But if telling you the plot points of this next chapter would constitute a spoiler in one sense, in another sense they hardly matter at all--because what happens at the Winter Solstice in the Cathedral of St. John is important only because of the things Lesle learns about herself, because of the decisions Deaclan is forced to make which will push him closer to the commitment he fears, because of the conclusions the movers-and-shakers who are in that building will draw and the things they will do in response--which will reveal to each of my PoVs things they might never have otherwise figured out, and cause them to react in turn.

My characters surprise me--usually in little ways, but occasionally in ways that leave me reeling for days--in every chapter I write. It isn't until I put them into these situations I dream up that I discover how they will react--and, naturally, their reactions shift the situation as it unfolds, so that I exist in a state of continual surprise. That's what makes the work of writing interesting, as far as I'm concerned: in part because the work continues to challenge, as I must continually adapt to their shenanigans. It's part of what makes the story come alive; but it also makes productivity uneven, because once enough surprises pile up, I have to stop and think about how the PoV whose task it is to begin the next segment of the tale (in this case, Deaclan) will react to the things that happened while he wasn't driving.

I know enough of what's on his mind now to begin the next chapter--so off I go.

Digging through the creative block: for entrepreneurs, too

I am just putting the finishing touches on my part of the task of filing corporate taxes for last year. Thank all the gods everywhere for accountants: this would be so much worse without mine.

Closing out 2007 finances has been a more complicated task than usual: part of the reason for this is the fact that Wynette is leaving Be Mused. By far the bigger part is that, as the business side of my and our creative life grew increasingly undefined, I grew very resistant to keeping up with the financial tracking, which has always been part of my share of the work. Oh, sure, I paid the bills on time and all that stuff -- but the filing, the logging, even much of the decision-making for the next year wound up stalled in big piles on my desk in the office. That's not typical behavior for me: I don't really *enjoy* that work, but I generally don't mind it, and I am reassured when I can account for all the mundane stuff.

It wasn't until last night, when I discovered areas of my desk I haven't seen in weeks, that I finally began to think about what was up with that. For most entrepreneurs, business life is their creative life. A business about which you care so passionately that you pour yourself into it: that is a creative effort at least as heartfelt as most novels. When a novelist develops resistance to moving forward in her work, we call it being blocked. But as far as I know, there are no such labels to describe the procrastination, anxiety, and avoidance behaviors that manifest in business people when something has gone wrong with their creativity.

But there was no question in my mind, once I looked at my situation in the office with my coach-eyes on: I have been creatively blocked in my business life. Something was wrong, and I was resisting moving forward. In my writing life, I've learned to recognize that a block is often a gift from my subconscious: unless there is something external going on, when I begin throwing up roadblocks on a novel, it's because the muse has spotted something wrong.

I've been peripherally aware that something had gone wrong in the business part of my creative life, for months. After all, Wynette and I had individually and collectively informed the universe, as fall began, that we did not want any new clients just then. (The universe complied, of course.) As the year drew to a close, we began shedding pieces of our business strategy that we could see weren't in line with our as-yet-hazy direction. But it wasn't until Wynette decided to make the final break with the business that I was able to step back, look at the business as a whole, and begin to figure out why I wasn't having fun anymore. At the time, of course, I didn't think that was what I was trying to figure out: I was just trying to figure out how to structure an author services business that didn't offer graphic services.

But why I wasn't having fun anymore was actually the more important question. I have been figuring out the answer, lately; Be Mused had represented things Wynette and I are really good at, aid we could give independent writers and publishers in support of an ideal in which we both believe. But those services we offered were not things we love in and of themselves; we do them passionately in pursuit of our own publishing efforts -- but that passion arises from our commitment to the novels we publish, not the tasks of editing and typeset and cover design. The part of aiding independent writers and publishers that I do love, the part I kept sneaking in around the edges of other work even when I wasn't charging for it, is the coaching and creativity work I've been doing with writers, entrepreneurs, and other visionaries for lo these many years.

If there is a First Rule of Creativity, it goes something like this:

If you're not passionate about the work you're doing, and the job is a creative one, you are wasting your time.

This rule also covers the running of a business. It's true because work done without passion is inherently not our best work: the person who is passionate will give that extra something that makes whatever they do shine.

I may be a very fine copyeditor, and an even better text editor -- but those are not tasks that, in and of themselves, arouse my creative passion. So I will be taking Be Mused in the direction of the things I love: creativity work and development coaching. I'm better at those things, anyway, and they don't make me want to let things pile up on my desk. And now that I've cleaned all the stuff I couldn't seem to face off my desk, I'm ready to dig in and begin the site redesign that will reflect Be Mused's new direction. I'll let you know when it's up.

If you find yourself letting things pile up, finding excuses not to do tasks you believe you should be doing, I suggest this is likely to be a message from your subconscious. Figuring out exactly what that message means may require some uncomfortable explorations in the territory inside your own head. But figuring it out may mean the difference between spending your days in joyous pursuit of your dreams -- and dragging yourself through the motions, wondering who said this business thing was supposed to be fun.

Go have some fun. Be Mused. :)

A Man's Gotta Know His Limitations

Anyone who's ever held a phone conversation with me knows I am an inveterate multitasker. I've got to be, if I'm going to complete all my self-assigned tasks. While I'm on the phone with somebody-- clients, friends, and family alike -- if the conversation lasts longer than three minutes, chances are I'm doing something else at the same time. I've talked to clients while weeding my garden, driving to school to pick up my daughter, making dinner, and performing myriad other tasks that require half my attention or less. EVERYONE has held phone conversations with me while I did the dishes: I am the mother of two teenagers, a scratch cook, and wholly committed to organic food, and the dishes just never stop piling up.

However, I can't hold the really intense conversations with clients that our creativity work necessitates while doing much of anything else: all of me goes into those conversations, and I am very nearly as oblivious to the outside world as I am when I'm writing. I probably shouldn't even drive -- and I generally don't. Usually these conversations are scheduled, and I'm able to be safely ensconced in my office while we talk.

Yesterday, however, I had an Idiot Moment. I was on my way from Point A to Point B, in fact just pulling into the gas station to fill up, when my phone rang; the caller was a person I have just begun working with, who is working on the most challenging project anyone I know has had the guts to take on. The project is esoteric by anyone's standards (yes, even mine) and my caller has taken on the challenge of communicating some mind-blowing ideas even though not a writer by nature or training. Last week we had an intense, wonderful session that led to a fantastic breakthrough in the structure of the project -- but it was one of those breakthroughs in which you can see why your approach isn't working, and maybe you have an idea of how to proceed instead, but that idea taps into challenging and scary territory. After a session like that, it's normal to need to sit with one's own ideas and feelings for a while before even attempting to move forward -- and equally normal to feel the need to talk to one's coach when the moving-forward begins again. Suffice it to say that I was eager for the next conversation, because I hate the feeling of leaving someone I'm working with at sea, even when I understand it's a necessary part of the process.

Even though I shouldn't even attempt to drive during such conversations, and even though every instinct I possessed shouted for me to just park the car while we talked, I was on a mission that was pretty important in the mundane sector of my life, and I knew if I didn't keep moving forward I'd miss a deadline. So I decided to just get through the situation on force of will, pump my gas while holding this important and demanding conversation, and drive on to my next destination. My caller graciously offered to call back another time; but I didn't want to leave the conversation hanging. I pumped my gas while talking and drove to my next destination, finishing our call in the parking lot before going inside.

But while I did successfully pump my gas, I failed to contain my wallet. I was too locked into the conversation. Because I was working without a headset and attempting to pump gas one-handed, I set my wallet on the roof of my car while I pulled out the credit card for the pump, and -- wait for it -- drove off with the wallet still on the roof.

Of course it's gone. I should have known better. I should have understood and respected my own limitations. I can do two things at once, but I can't do three -- and I really can't do anything else when engaged in intense creative work, whether it's mine or someone else's.

So, today's lesson: understand and respect your needs and limitations. Creative work is not like the other sorts of work we do: it demands everything we've got. To give it less is to guarantee failure of some sort. All things considered, I'm lucky that my wallet was all I lost.