Today is my last day of sabbatical before jumping into Nanowrimo. On this last day of my journey to find my inspiration again, I want to give you some insight on what can actually be gained from taking some much needed time off:

-when you aren't supposed to be writing three pages a day, you find yourself wanting to write three pages a day.
-there are other books out there besides vampire novels and books about infertility and depression.
-Bejeweled blitz on Facebook is addictive. So are Pieces of Flair and The Mood Weather Report.
-AOL radio has an all Nickelback channel which is very cool.
-dreaming turns into moments when your characters are talking to you again.
-suddenly, I have three more novels to add to the series I'm currently writing. I cultivated the plot lines for the last three novels while watching Heroes Season 3, Prince Caspian, and Dune.
-I'm also thinking about writing a fantasy series about five or six years from now.
-I've had great conversations with friends and family about my writing and found fantastic inspiration and encouragement in those conversations.
-friends who have been very understanding about my devotion to my work and the little bits of time I get to spend out with them. This break has been wonderful for them, but as of this past week, they are all telling me to go back to work. Except Karrie, who wants to play more DDR.

Ultimately, even though I haven't always enjoyed the time off from my work, I'm finding myself refreshed and ready to get back to business as usual. I'm excited to see Forbidden released in the middle of November and I'm pumped up for my Nano novel this year. There comes a time when we all need to recharge our batteries. I'm glad I took the time off to recharge mine.

It's hard to rewrite something that you've already finished. Especially when you've written it so long ago that you can't honestly remember what it was you had written before.

I finished Legacy in April. It had been hard to write, bogged down with historic fact, with a plot that twisted so much I could hardly keep it straight. My villain wasn't bad enough, my hero was not heroic enough, and the human girl stuck in the middle of the story had too much information for the time period. Did I mention that Ulrich makes his first appearance in the story line in this novel? It's a lot to take in.

I hated every single page of Legacy's first draft. Well, not every single page, but at least the majority of them. So the ability to rewrite the story is a wonderful opportunity for me. I can remake the plot so it actually makes sense and rewrite my villain so he's the horrible bad guy I see in my head. I can make my hero an actual heroic figure. So many things to fix, so little time to do it.

As it stands right now, I won't get to Legacy again until December 1st because of Nanowrimo. I'm currently sitting on page 27 of the draft. It has to be completed and edited by May 21st, 2010 because that's when it's being published. Which means that I have about six months after Nano is over to finish it up. I've never been under that kind of a crunch before. Prophecy was done in January of this year and published in June. Forbidden was finished in July and will be published in about two weeks. That's how I've liked it to be done. But Legacy has thrown a wrench in my works.

We'll have to see if I make my deadline or if it blows up in my face.

There isn't much time left. I have exactly six days left on my sabbatical, then I jump headfirst into the craziest month of my existence. I have figured out that if I want to hit my 53000 words this year, I have to write 2500 words a day five days a week. If I stretch that out to six days a week, that count goes to 2120 words a day. If I write every single day of the week for the entire month of November, I would have to write 1767 words a day. It's not as intimidating as it sounds.

53000 words is roughly 102 single spaced pages in Arial 11 point font. I wrote 129 pages in just over two weeks last year in October before jumping into Nano. So this shouldn't be horrible. I might even be able to have a social life while participating in Nano this year.

The whole point of Nanowrimo is to prove to yourself that yes, you can do this. There's no excuse to keep putting off the chance to write that book you've been dreaming about. It's tons of fun and I'm excited to be a part of it again this year. The prize is just too cool.

So I'm going to enjoy my last six days of sabbatical (I might even cut it short and work on Legacy before the Nano craziness begins) and make plans for November that are far enough away that I can plan my writing around them. Then I'm going to wait for my proof copy of Forbidden to arrive so I can again hold the work my mind in the palm of my hand.

Here it is! The new cover is finally available. The proof is on the way, so very soon I'll be holding this book in my hands. I just couldn't wait to share the new cover with everyone since it was approved by createspace.

I have also found out what the prize is going to be for winning Nanowrimo this year. It is the same as last year, but getting a free proof copy of your novel is a big deal. I'm excited to participate in Nano again this year for that prize alone.

See you next week!

There wasn't much writing this week unfortunately. So, I didn't really listen to anything special. But I'm gearing up for Nano in a week, so here's a peek at what's coming up for music in November:

I had a very enlightening conversation with my brother-in-law Nic last night. He's very much into fantasy novels and isn't too keen on the whole vampire thing because it's mainstream right now. So we started talking about fantasy novels and he asked me if I had ever thought about writing a fantasy novel myself. To be completely honest, I have pondered the possibility. There's just so much work involved in it that I haven't put a lot of work into it yet.

Then I started laying out the Prophecy universe for Nic and hooked him. That made me feel good. But what really gave me the high of major accomplishment was when he told me two things: one, that I'm a master storyteller to have all this backstory and history for my own characters, and two, that I need to write a fantasy novel because it would be huge.

So what makes a good story? This was the question I asked myself this morning when I got up. Sure, you may have the best idea in the world, but what would actually make that a good story to tell? I have the answer: history.

You can have the coolest group of characters in the world, you can have the greatest setting in the world, and the best plotline ever created. But if you don't have a history, a backstory, for those characters, then you don't have anything at all. History gives your characters a purpose. It also enables you to show the reader the story instead of tell them.

Why is drinking from humans forbidden for vampires? Because that's the law. Well, why is that the law? Aha, that's the reason behind the book. Why do you have to kill all of your competition to become the vampire king? Again, that's why you need to read the book. See what I mean?

The richer and more varied the history, you'll either have a great novel or a confused one. So don't go so deep in the history that things are contradicting other things or it's impossible to keep up. Start with something simple and expand on that. Make it rich and varied, but keep in mind that you want the reader to get it.

I had a great time last night talking to my bro in law about the plot for Prophecy. He was surprised at the complexity and depth of it. That's a compliment to any writer. Strive for it.

I had a very interesting conversation with a friend of mine yesterday. He just finished reading Prophecy for the first time. Then, he started dreaming about the movie.

What movie? The one that hasn't been made yet. Prophecy isn't in the mass market yet, but Tyler was already dreaming about the movie. It was very inspiring and ego boosting for me.

Has that ever happened to you? You're reading a good book and you can see it being made into a movie?

I got that way with the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon and Ransom by Julie Garwood to name only two. The only disappointing thing is that when they actually do make those books into movies, they just aren't as good. It's definitely something to think about.

So it took me a little longer to get the shot I wanted for the cover of Forbidden. It's still not done completely yet, but now I'm happy. I apologize for my extended absence, but if it's not done right, then it's not done yet.

As I've been transcribing most of the week, it's not really music to write by so much as it's music to help me forget how tedious it is to type someone else's words.

Starting tomorrow, I'm going to be out of the office until Monday. It's time to start scouting locations for the Forbidden cover photo. So I really will be gone until then, but I'll try to post a Music To Write By for Saturday. Have a good weekend!!

I apologize for the tardiness of this post. I was...otherwise occupied over the weekend. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. Since there wasn't a whole lot of writing last week (for reasons that you are probably more than aware of and sick of hearing about), there isn't a lot of music to write by. Here's the short list:

It's Friday! That means it's time to have fun for the first time in a long time. With this in mind, I thought I'd go through the contents of my bag with you to make you laugh. You might not believe me right now, but it's funny. Or maybe that really is just funny to me.

I love the friends I have that loved Prophecy enough that they want to beta read (or cold read as I will sometimes call it) for me. Even the ones that are upfront enough to tell me that they want to read the finished product, but really don't want to read the novels until they're finished. It's all helpful. As I stare at the second "first" draft of Legacy, I'm starting to wonder if my beta readers know what they're really getting into.

I've been on sabbatical almost a full week now and while I'm happy for the time off because of all the stuff I've had in my personal life, I'm starting to itch.

No I don't have a rash. My mind is itching to go back to creating.

I'm so ready to get back to work, but I know that I can't yet. Why can't I just end my own sabbatical? I mean, I'm the one in charge of my career, how am I not in charge of my time off? It's a bit more complicated than that.

Back in July (I think it was July) I took a week off, intending to take more, but I cut my time short because I wanted to get back to work. I thought I was inspired and ready to finish. Then two months later, I'm wondering why I didn't take more time off. This sabbatical now wouldn't be necessary if I'd taken all the time off I should've taken back then. Besides, the edits for Forbidden aren't done yet, and Coco's pups aren't very old. It's better to have this kind of time on my hands instead of wondering how I'm going to cram my writing into the schedule I have right now.

I'm actually thinking about staying on sabbatical until November 1st. Then I'm ready to go for Nano and I'll have another month before I start worrying about what I'm going to do with Legacy. A whole month without creating any kind of story line. It's scary and exhillarating at the same time. I want to write, I've got all these ideas bouncing around my head. But what happens when I work through them all and have nothing new?

Sometimes in life we all need to take some time away, time to step back and evaluate our lives. While I hate having to do that with my writing, it's necessary to make the writing the very best it can be. I don't want to look at a manuscript later on and realize that I have to start from page one all over again because I wasn't writing well.

Don't be afraid to step back and let your mind breathe.

NP over at Coffee Stained Writer (www.coffee-stainedwriter.blogspot.com) posted about stealing other people's ideas last week (I think it was Saturday? I read the post on Saturday) and I wanted to clear the air a little bit because I felt the post was inadvertently directed over here to me. Consider this the only time I'm going to rant on this blog. Most of my rants are saved for my personal blog, but I digress.

Even in my chaos this week, I did get some work done. Here's what I've been listening to this week:

With such an eventful week, I feel like I have accomplished absolutely nothing. While I know that's not true, it's hard to look back at my time this week and feel like anything good came from it. In case you've missed it, here's the contents of my week:

I've been harping on Nanowrimo for how long now? And you still haven't signed up? I don't want to hear any more excuses. If I can do it, you can do it.