Okay, so we’re really still in spring, but with the schools shutting down for break, it sure feels like summer around here.

Last Thursday #4 graduated from pre-school. Had a cute, if not silly, cap and gown ceremony, complete with the walk to get his big-boy diploma. :party: Friday morning he woke up and got ready for kindergarten. He sure was bummed to find out he had to wait aaallllll summer long before he could actually start. Today is the last day of 7th grade for #1. #2 and #3 finish up next Thursday.

With all four monsters out of school for 9 weeks, it’s time to set up a new schedule around here. One that doesn’t include 5:30am wake-ups and 6 trips a day to schools. I need to keep them occupied and happy so when it comes to my writing time, I can have it undisturbed. Yeah, right!

#3 will be leaving for a week of NFL football camp in two weeks. #1 will go the first week of July to Standford girls soccer camp for competetive players. #2 has a week long over-night horse camp. #2 and #4 will stay a week at grandma’s while I’m in Reno at the end of July. Other than that, I’ve been laxed on setting things up for them to do. No swim lessons. No local day camps–not that my now teen is into any of that. She just wants to hang with her friends. :dance:

But lack of plans for them spells big-time trouble for me. When, oh, when will I have writing time if I always have them under foot? How will I manage long, hot days when the sun lingers until after 9:30 and the monsters don’t settle down until well after 10:00? Evening writing will be shot, unless I can muster the energy to stay up till the wee-hours of the morn. I’ve done that before, and it works. Just not after a day of swimming or monster fight-break-ups because they’ve been known to do that when they get bored.

Remember I said no more 5:30am wake-ups? I think I lied. If I want to get any writing done this summer–any work done at all–I’m going to have to get up early and get it done before the monsters have a chance to gather their let-do-something-fun-today Momma please chant.

I’ve been thinking about making a deal with them. I have deadlines and just can’t blow off writing while entertaining my monsters for the next 9 weeks. Can’t happen. So, I’ve decided to offer them some bribes. I know, bad parenting :naughty:, but it’s the bribes or I start :beer:

I think it may work. I get to work in the mornings. #1 is old enough to act as supervisor so I can be with my PC. Unless someone is bleeding or dying, cartoons and videos will work for them. If they manage to leave me alone, then we’ll do lunch and do something FUN in the afternoon. So if I can find entertaining things that will be good for #1–#4, I’ll be all set. Do you think it’ll work?

For those of you with children or who have your schedules messed with during the sizzling days of summer, how do you manage to stay on task? How do you get your writing done when so many other things are pulling and begging for your attention? Do any of you who have mastered it have any advice?:pray:

Since I was eight, I’ve gone by the name Renee. Not eight minutes. Not even eight hours or days. Eight full years before I took on my name.

Before Renee, I was Radhika.

Radhika is Hindu, meaning the female counter-part (lover/wife) of Krishna. Radhika is a goddess.

But having the name be so different isn’t easy for a child. When no one can pronounce the name, or spell it, it leads to teasing, to pain, to harsh nic-names. Even more troubling, though I didn’t know it being so young, but grown-ass men would call me Eradica–read erotica. That’s just not cool. There was the name that still haunts me, dubbed by my :evil:older brother Hot-Rad-Rica. Today he calls me Hot-Rad. I’ve been Renee for many years.

We all know the words to this song. Thank you Janet J. We’ve probably asked it before, a time or two, of our spouses, friends, family, critique partners, agents, editors. Those in our lives who we expect something from. But I’ve been thinking about a different sort of question recently, and how I can use it to make thing better for me.

What have I done for myself?

And the answer, I’m afraid, is shamefully very little.

I’ve been rather lazy with my writing recently. I keep thinking that inspiration is going to strike. That my muse will take over, spilling the words effortlessly onto the page, beautiful and flowing. That the words she weaves will create a story readers will be unable to put down, and hell, one I will be unable to stop typing. But as the days go by and my muse doesn’t well, muse, I find myself feeling frustrated and angry. And lazy.:mad:

Should my muse control me? Control my writing regardless of deadlines? Control my productiveness? My laziness?

Or, should I control her?

Should I search deep inside and say,”Look here, wench, I’m the boss of this writing. I rule the roost. I’m queen of my creativity.” I’ve decided to wrestle her into cooperation, to do my bidding, to write when I say she’s going to. Whips, chains. The cold hard steel of handcuffs. Look-out:!: I’m tying my muse down and making her write when I say so, not when the *B* thinks she’s good and ready. Which could be never if I don’t take command.

What happens for me is that she’s moody at first, irritated by being forced. The words are choppy and ugle and in desperate need of editing, hell, of deleting. But, as I force her onto the third and fourth page, as I make her keep going, make the words keep coming, she gets into the rhythm, the flow, the tempo, the beat. Look out, my muse got her groove on. Sizzle, she’s smokin’.

So, I’m wondering how you all control your muses. Or do they control you and your writing time?

Ask your muse, “What have you done for me lately?”

So, what’s workin’ for you? I’ll tell you what’s workin’ for me.

Me first

Nothing. Not right now. There was this once-upon-a-time when as soon as my four little monsters were tucked all snug in their beds for the nights that I’d leave my husband to his ESPN and video games and head for my PC. After login on and checking-in with my CP, we’d both get to work. Though we’d find plenty of times to stop back by to give progress reports and say hi–and chat. A lot– we were both pretty damn productive. It was working well for us. The evening hours would end and before we knew it we were in the AM. Little matter, we worked until our eyelids were sticking together before we’d shut-down and seek our own beds. Night after night we worked on little sleep, driven by the power of the written word and the desperate need to tell our H/H stories. We both had our own pace and our own projects, but shared a common need. A need to write. To sell. To succeed.

I’m not sure what happened eventually. I’d be tired. Or she would. More often than not we’d miss each other, one of us going to bed early while the other worked and the next night visa versa. We just weren’t finding a way to stay caffienated the same evenings and my production slipped. Came to a screaching-freakin’ halt. The snail chomping away at my day lilies is working at a faster rate.

I’d rather work at night. Even though there is a two and a half hour period during the mornings when all four mini-Lukes are at school, the phone rings, the neighbor’s dog won’t shut-up, and our lawn-dude does overtime. Oh, and did I mention email? Being on the west coast, by the time I sit down in the morning to open my files, I already have dozens to catch up on. And they keep coming, too. All day. But at night–PST–the emails slow way way way down.

I’d love to be able to set a schedule. I work from here to then–nothing to bother me between. Life just doesn’t seem to agree. Luckily, when I write, I write fast, so I’ve been doing most of it during short little spurts–doing a synopsis or two for a proposal in an hour. (Hey, I never said they were good ) Then playing nothing but mom and wife for days–then another little spurt of writing. Of being productive. This is SO not how I want it to be.

I’m still looking for ways to remind myself that this IS a job. It’s fun to forget–and easy to forget when you don’t get out of your pj’s. I thinking looking at it from that POV helps. Now I need to take charge and set rules.

Rules that work for me. Then stick to them

What’s workin’ for you?

Here we are. April 1st. A fool’s day. Does that make me foolish? I wonder this often.:roll: Mom of four kids, the oldest just hitting teenagehood, most the time I think, yes. I’m Renee Luke. Mom by day. Erotica author by night. I write for NAL. Chocolate Kisses, my first release, will hit shelves this winter. Sylvia and I met via email just after her sale. Bravo, hon. We’re now email buds.

So what makes me foolish? Other than having four kids, you mean? Let’s see? Maybe the fact that I try to fit writing into twenty minutes slots between homework and dinner. Or, that I play Spider during primo quiet times when I should be doing nothing but writing. How about checking email as soon as I get home, everytime I walk in the door even if there are more pressing matters…like a pressing need to use the little girlsroom after sucking down a few liters of water. Foolish enough, yet?

It gets worse. I have this foolish problem of knowing I need to do something, but waiting until the very last minute–second–to get it done. A deadline? Sppp…I can do it later. I’m busy playing online games. Does staying up all night sound like a good plan to you? That’s what happens when the deadline arrives and I’m not finished yet. Would’ve been if I wasn’t such a fool.

And then there is this matter of being foolish enough to think that I could be a writer–an author. Me. Dyslexic Me. Yet despite all my foolery, I’ve managed to sneak past the naysayers and worst, my self critic, and I made it. Tripping, juggling, skipping to the finish, somehow along the way I manged to get contracted. Wow. Damn. Can hardly believe it. A fool? Me?

And here, I’d been about to give up this dream.

See:!: Told you I was a fool. Now, time to close Spider and start on my next deadline, right?