I realized that I posted my convention itinerary (as it exists so far) on April Fool's. It's not in fact an April Fool's joke. My books were available at Norwescon, and books and posters will be available at Sasquan (Worldcon in Spokane) and Rose City Comicon. It's also likely that I'll be at OryCon in Portland in November. I don't know if I'll be a panelist, but it's close enough to home that, unless I'm out of the country, I make an effort to be there every year. Also on the radar, possibly, is World Fantasy in September. That's quite a ways out of my way, and a lot of travel for one year, but I've always wanted to go …. So there we are.
Work continues apace on The Poisoned Past trilogy. I'm stuck at the moment. I don't worry about stuck-ness, though. Some of the best writing comes out of struggling with a scene or a theme or whatever rather than patching together a workable solution and moving on. Getting stuck means that the brain is aware that something is not as good as it could be, or that there's something seriously wrong. As long as you don't go running toward the nearest pile of sand with the intent of burying your head in it, you're in good shape. If you take the stuckness as an opportunity to re-evaluate where you were going with an idea, and maybe even brain storm some possibilities, then something really excellent can come from it. After all, if everything is moving along smoothly and quickly, there's a chance that everything is also moving along predictably. Not always, but there's that chance.
Definitely don't take a break, though. A step back, sure. Time to let the subconscious work? Maybe sleep on it. Ignore the problem for weeks? That's not working. That's procrastination. If I take too long between writing sessions, I have no f***ing clue what I was writing and where I was going with it. That's bad. Really bad.
In other news, I'm at the coast. I'll be back home in a few hours, but in the meantime I'm enjoying the sea air, rare sunshine and warmth for this time of year, and very little wind. There's something about walking barefoot in the sand on a warm day that fills me with alive-ness. I love the sea. I respect it, fear it, but most of all, I love the oceans, steely and wide and cool, blue and warm and green, love the waves and calm and deep, shallow, vast, seen and dark, silent, roaring and free.
Long Beach, April 2015