Back to the Writing Life

Not only did my mother's passing take up most of my time last week, but the week before, my younger daughter moved to Honolulu. My husband and I took a whirlwind trip to Seattle to help her and her boyfriend clean out their apartment, to get my daughter's car to the shipyards, and to get them to the Sea-Tac airport for their flight out.

These things drain not only one's physical energy, but in a way that has more far-reaching impact--one's spiritual and emotional energy. And wouldn't you know it? Now that my daughter's been in Hawaii for two weeks, she's decided she doesn't like it. Bah! It's for her to figure out.

In the past two weeks, I've hardly looked at the Young Adult manuscript that I am revising (again). Typically, if I'm at home and not dealing with other life issues, I do have 60-90 minutes of spare time each day. In that time, it's always a choice between two priorities: To write? Or to exercise? I am currently 35 pounds overweight. You can guess what my choice had been for quite a while (writing!), and what my choice probably should be instead (exercising).

Until my routine got broken, I actually had been exercising in my spare time. I'd made my goal of jogging 12 miles/week for six weeks straight. Woo-hoo for me. I'm trying to get back to jogging a 12-minute mile. I'm currently at a 16-minute mile, and so I have a ways to go. Last winter, I'd feared I might not be able to get it back. Now, I'm confident that I can ... eventually.

Instead of jogging today, I decided to take a look at my MIP. My goal is to make it more solidly into a romance, which means I will need to do far more sculpting of scenes where the hero and heroine are together, and to make sure the hero is in every scene that is possible for him to be in.

I also need to be in love with him, and to have a really strong idea of what he looks like. I knew immediately who I wanted him to look like: Cesare Borgia on Showtime's The Borgias. Jeremy Irons, the Pope, is probably closer to my age, but whenever Cesare is on screen, my eyes devour him. Here's a couple of off-screen photos of him.

You think he'd be a great, smoldering, "goth-ish" YA hero? I do.

Jeremy Irons, left and Francois Arnaud