writing

Take The Time To Do It Right

/ PaigeRandall / 5 Comments

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On February 7, when I started writing Circling, we were in the middle of a horrid winter. I was never so happy for piles of snow since I was strapping on skates and skimming frozen surfaces as a child in Rhode Island. Snow days, as I quickly found, are ideal writing days. There is literally nothing better to do than to snuggle up with a laptop and create a new world full of gorgeous, complicated people, who have sex in public places.

Carving out time to write Book 2 seems a bit trickier. Gone are my seemingly endless 16 hour shower free days. And I wasn’t doing any blogging back then.  Every evening as the sun sets, it is a choice.  Blog or book. Now on weekends the damn sun is shining and beckoning me to do things like visit beaches and climb little mountains.

So forgive me for going light from time to time.  Any writers’ tips for avoiding the sophomore slump? How do you keep the writing energy up in the summer? Should I encase my laptop in plastic and bring it into the sand?

Sexy Lunching with a Writer

/ PaigeRandall / 2 Comments

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I just had the most fantastic lakeside lunch! Romance novelist Isabelle Richards and I enjoyed a three hour, boozy, laugh out loud, sun-filled afternoon discussing our novels. Isabelle is an amazing woman and she has been the driving force behind my work. You might notice a credit to me in her Acknowledgements section. I had the honor of editing When Fates Collide and it really helped me to get writing. I fucking love her! Over the last months, we have spent an inordinate amount of time discussing which is more intimate – oral or vaginal sex. Our views do not align, but the discussion has been a hell of a lot of fun.

This week, we did a trade. She reviewed my manuscript while I reviewed hers. Today was THE MEET. Isabelle is writing the sequel to When Fates Collide. How fun to sit and discuss the motivations and complications of our characters like they are sitting at the next table. We covered their actions and reactions, their morality, their chances for redemption. Ok, there was more. We discussed their bodily fluids, the timeliness of their erections, and how they’d look naked. It was a very productive conversation. (Sorry for the backwash photo btw.)

I’m going to post this waste of a blog entry and then open the file for Circling. I have let it rest for a few weeks. I needed a little distance, but I am ready to get back in and finish it.  I am so close.

Maybe going dark for a while. I’ll be back…

 

On Writing THE END

/ PaigeRandall / 11 Comments

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It’s over? Is it really and truly over? I started a few months ago, staring at a blank screen with a flashing little line. It pulsates, that little line. Write. Now. Write. Now. Write. Now.

And suddenly there is a place.
And the place is filled with people.
And the people are filled with stories.
And their world becomes my world and I like their world.
I like it a lot.

I like their secrets and their honesty. I like their selfishness and their caring. I like their fear and their courage. I like their pain. Oh I like their pain so very much.  And I love their passion. I also like their hair. They have really great hair.

And then it is done.

For my whole life, I thought of typing the words THE END as a leap across a finish line, with a ribbon across my chest and my arms raised in a V for victory.

But I’m not ready to say goodbye to these characters just yet. There are more stories to tell.

-THE BEGINNING-