Writing is a curious addiction for me. I write my first drafts standing up, with my laptop open on the kitchen counter. I tell myself writing in the kitchen standing up is because, if I’m near the coffee pot, I don’t have to waste time walking from the desk in the office to get a jolt of caffeine.
This logic accounts for my excessive caffeine intake and the ritual of grinding and mixing the various coffee beans. Coffee, for me, can be like wine. Much thought goes into both the selection and the consumption.
Coffee in the morning. Wine at night. Routine.
Except when I’m waiting for an editorial critique to arrive while I’m right in the middle of the building crisis in the next book.
I know my addiction. As soon as I get Arsen’s book back in my hands, I’ll HAVE to start those rewrites. And I’ll be leaving poor Baz hanging in the middle of his crisis.
“You can wait until later,” I will tell him.
And he will reply that the Muses will desert me and I’ll never figure out how to write him to his happy ending.
My strategy, in the last three days, has been to stand at my counter, drinking coffee, trying to get Baz to the HEA in his first draft before Arsen returns.
Something that, curiously, has become a mixture of excitement and dread.
Because addictions are like that. You feed off the creative flow, the ideas, think it’s fantastic, the best you’ve ever had, and then in the morning you get the critique back and you are afraid–completely afraid to reopen that document and read what you wrote six weeks ago.
Afraid it will be complete garbage.
This morning, I armed myself with a new blend of coffee–decaffeinated, blended with chamomile and lavender–and I opened Arsen’s story, pretended I hadn’t written it and read the first few pages.
They were pretty good.
So was the coffee. Although I confess. I added ground beans from what was described as a rare and limited crop from an area in Costa Rica, from fields in mountains approximately 5,085 feet high–which would support my theory that coffee is now as highly personalized as wine.
Perfect for rituals.
COMING SOON
THE TEARS IN MIDNIGHT (Book 4-Arsen’s story)
COMING SOMETIME AFTER THAT
THE MEMORIES IN MOONLIGHT (Book 5-Baz’s story)
Sue Wilder Writes 