For the past couple weeks I’ve been motivated, writing over 10,000 words a week on my wip. That train slowed to a crawl this week. I’ll be lucky if I write over 5,000 words this week. I had too many things going on and was feeling stressed. I still wrote the first couple days, but on Wednesday I read over at my last scene … and it was crap. Not fixable crap, but boring not-furthering-the-plot crap. I deleted it and wrote a new scene that was much better. I even gained one page. I felt good, but thought “enough. ” I took the rest of the day off to do something else that popped up. And I didn’t allow myself to feel guilty.

Big mistake. I goofed off the rest of the week, and a part of me is still saying “Don’t feel guilty, just enjoy.” Then I hear from writers like Karin Tabke and Sharon Long, who write half a book in a week, and I think “It’s time to feel guilty” again. So now I’m jumping back on that writing train. Kind of. It won’t last long. I’ll be busy next week getting the house cleaned for a visit from my sister and a family barbecue.

Starting next week I’m lowering my daily goal to 5 pages through Thursday, and at least one page on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Even on my slacking off days this week I wrote one or two pages a day. I need that daily continuity.

I made the self-hypnotism tape I was talking about doing, which might help motivate me. Sandra Turriff, a writer who is a ceritified hypnotherapist, gave me suggestions for the script and advised me to listen to it twice a day. Yesterday, I listened to it for the second time just before I went to bed. I woke up this morning feeling energized.

What inspires you to write when you don’t feel like it? Guilt? Ambition? Or are you like Karin, who is inspired by her deadlines?

I almost forgot about writing the blog today. I’m focused on meeting my page goals for my wip (which I’m making so far ). Plus it’s summer. We have festivals in Wisconsin. Today was Strawberry Fest. I turned my computer off about 2:30 and was getting ready to leave when I noticed how dark it was. I went downstairs, looked outside, and told my husband we’d better not go anywhere.

Not long after that the storm hit. Really bad sideways rain, with thunder roaring and lightning bolts crashing. I was going through my clothes upstairs, weeding out stuff to give to the Salvation Army, when my husband came up and told me I should go downstairs. He NEVER does that. So I follow him downstairs, and as soon as I do, the rain eases up.

We ended up staying home today. But next week is fourth of July weekend. I’m guessing we’ll be busy. The following weekend my sister is coming in from Phoenix to stay with us for three days. We’re having a family picnic at my place. Plus I have some other things going on.

What I’m trying to say is my summer isn’t easy. My summer is busy. I’m setting a 50-page goal for next week, but not for the following week. There will be some cleaning going on here that week.

What about you? Is your summer easy or is it busy? Does it affect your writing or doesn’t it make much difference?

I started and deleted two blogs already. Eeek! I wanted to talk about mind-expanding music, but I googled too many links to support what I said. It ended up looking like a lesson instead of a blog. I’ll try again. If you want to know more about this, you can google the studies yourself. They are out there!

I just finished reading Through the Open Door: Secrets of Self-Hypnosis by Kevin Hogan and Mary Lee Lebay. I plan on blogging more about it on my Thursday blog on Magical Musings. For now I want to talk about music. You probably know about the Mozart effect, that certain music can expand your mind. Studies also show you retain more of what you study while you’re listening to certain music. And when you listen to a hypnotic script that’s set to certain music, it creates an accelerated learning experience.

I found three of the concerts listed in the book at the library. Last night I put Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons on the stereo, and settled into my recliner with a book. Any time I sit on the recliner, my cat thinks it’s her signal to jump on my lap and allow me to give her a whole body massage. This time, however, she perched on the footrest and stared at the speakers. She stayed like that for the entire CD.

She’s NEVER done that before. It was almost all violin music, which does sound a lot like cat sounds, so maybe she thought it was cat music. But I enjoyed it too. I think we’re both smarter today.

Is there anything you do that makes your brain more active while you write? Caffeine, music, exercise, dark chocolate?

If you like, you can listen to this while you’re commenting and see if it expands your mind:

I recently found out about street teams from the M.J. Rose article on this Irene Goodman Agency webpage. (You’ll need to scroll down.) I brought it to Karin Tabke’s attention, and she jumped on it. Two of Karin’s books are released this month — Jaded on the 17th and Master of Surrender on the 24th — and she thought this was a great way to get the word out.

In a short time, Karin started putting together a street team, including a Yahoo group. She talks about street teams on a Writer Unboxed interview and on her Murder She Writes group blog.

I think it’s a fabulous idea. We have a local Waldenbooks that does really well in romance. The main reason is Cindi Streicher, who manages the romance section. Cindi doesn’t just stock the shelves, she handsells books. These are books she enjoys reading, and it shows to her customers. They trust her opinion. (She’s hand sold books to me!) So if you have a team of friends, relatives, and co-workers telling people how great your book is, leaving your bookmarks at libraries, etc. , it’s going to make a difference. (Plus doing all the other things in Karin’s Street Team letter.)

This last week, members of the Writers Promo Tips group said they noticed hits on their websites increased when they did blog tours. That’s another way to do it. Nancy Haddock did a blog tour, including Magical Musings. Because I’m on a couple loops with her, I went to the blogs to leave a comment. At every blog, someone would be raving about Nancy’s book, La Vida Vampire. I wanted to buy it before this, but I don’t live near a bookstore and wasn’t getting to one. Finally I ordered it on Amazon. I don’t know if I would have if I hadn’t seen so many people talking about it. So there’s an example of buzz and a blog tour working.

I’m storing all this up for when I sell. It does seem as if these kind of things, getting a street buzz, is more effective and less expensive than buying ads.

What makes you buy from an author you’ve never bought from before? What has someone done to get the work out about their books that you thought was brilliant? (Besides writing a fabulous book. ) Do you have any ideas on ways to create buzz?

This month I’m taking an emotion workshop given by Suzanne McMinn. I’ve been fascinated by body language for a long time. I like to use it in my books to show emotions. Instead of saying someone is angry, I can say “his hands clenched” and everyone knows what he’s feeling. The problem is, after a while I notice I’m using the same gestures over and over again. To show their anger, my characters do the fist thing, stiffen their bodies, slash their eyebrows together, clench teeth.

I found a file I had labeled “Physical Response” that I haven’t used for years. Under anger, in addition to the reactions I mentioned already, I have “thrust head forward, retracted shoulders.” Not a lot. The Nonverbal Dictionary (I got the link from Write Attitude’s Resource page) says:

Usage: Anger may show in a. jaws tensed to a biting position; b. postures of the broadside display (e.g., hands-on-hips); c. cut-off and head-jerk cues; d. fist, hand-behind-head, and palm-down beating gestures; e. frowning and tense-mouth expressions; f. growling voice tones; and g. staring.

That’s good. The next paragraph says:

Anatomy. In the face, motion energy maps reveal that anger shows most prominently in contortions around the eyebrows for frowning. Corrugator supercilii muscles, blended with occipitofrontalis and orbicularis oculi, draw the eyebrows down, as if to shield the eyes, producing vertical furrows above the nose. At the same time procerus, blended with occipitofrontalis, produces horizontal wrinkles over the bridge of the nose. Anger shows in contracted orbicularis oris and masseter muscles (of the tense-mouth, e.g.) as well.

In other words, the character glares and his mouth tenses. I’ve mentioned the vertical lines before, but not the horizontal wrinkles over the bridge of the nose. That might be too detailed or clinical to use in a book.

Would you like to share a physical expression of anger? Something from one of your books?

If this subject interests anyone, I’ll do another emotion next week. Or else I’ll go back to the regular program. Any emotion you’d like to discuss?