Getting to know you...

I like my coffee light and sweet. That means you dump sugar and creamer (french vanilla or irish creme is preferable but I'll take regular in a pinch - maybe some half-&-half - never milk) in the cup until you think it couldn't possibly get any closer to syrup, then add a touch more. Perfect.

The dog's name is McCartney. Yes, after him. It's a thing with our family, the music stuff. The World's Greatest Hubby has a music degree and all the kids either play some type of musical instrument or used to. Me? I play CDs. Classical, jazz, anything instrumental, really. So all of our pets (past and present) have been/are named after famous musicians or composers. [We even had a little stray Siamese cat take up residence outside our old house and the WGH named him "Sibelius" ("Sibby" for short). Unfortunately, Sibby had a full-blown case of feline leukemia so we had to do the humane albeit heartbreaking thing. Sigh. We're convinced someone dumped him in our neighborhood because of it. People can be so cruel.]

A good piece of music is like a really good book. When the storylines blend together, the outcome is quite satisfactory. Aesthetically pleasing, if you will. My music of choice when I'm writing depends on either my mood or the scene I'm working on. Something dramatic calls for... well, something dramatic. We found this great CD called "Classical Thunder". It starts out with Strauss and ends with Tchaikovsky and there's nothing but tympani and fabulously blaring horns and ripping strings in between. Inspiring. On mellow days I like Vivaldi and Vaughan Williams.

Character Exercise: There are six other lovely and talented ladies in my writers' group, and the book I'm working on currently is a major exercise in characterization and the one thing I struggle with most in my writing - point of view. My cohorts want me to work on making my characters more "real", which I usually do pretty well (sometime I'll explain the whole creme puffs vs carrot cake thing) but am having trouble with in this book because there are just so darn many of them. Hence the POV issues. It's hard to focus on the story when there are so many people around to tell it.

The blessing is that I've found something that might turn out to be the biggest help yet. Have you ever received one of those emails from your friend where you're asked a bunch of questions about that person to see how well you know him/her? I got one of those the other day, and as I was skimming through the questions it occurred to me that I should do one of those profiles on each of my characters. This has been the most fun I've had in weeks. It's helping me with my issues.

Well, the writing ones, anyway.

Read a book. It's good for you.

=) JB