We'd gotten out of the Day Without Electricity habit, and I realized a few things:

• If I let them, Twitter and Facebook will swallow up my entire life
  
• I get more done when I'm unable to distract myself with SHINY, BLINKY LIGHTS


• The kinds of things I do without electricity are fundamentally more satisfying to my soul than the ones I do with it

My kid has a friend named Autumn. That's perfectly precious, but Autumn has a brother named Odin. Autumn and Odin have 4 other siblings, including Indigo. I love this family.

ANYWAY. That is NOT the subject of this post. The subject of this post is that one of Odin's classmates is moving rather suddenly, and they're having to give up their chickens. I told Odin's mother we'd at least foster the chickens and find new homes for them. I didn't hear and didn't hear, then got a call from the guy. I tried calling him back, and again, nothing for days.

I've been listening to a couple of Oscar Wilde books (Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories and The Picture of Dorian Gray, both originally published in 1891), and I've noticed a striking similarity of tone between it and Susanna Clarke's book Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norell.

I have exceedingly vivid dreams that I use as the basis for a lot of my fiction. We all know this.

A few years back, my dreams tended to revolve around military and spy technology, and I wrote a great deal of that kind of thing. It's still coming into some kind of final form, but I'm not sure what that form should be.

I'm now having the same problem with the series of occult dreams I've been having. Thus far, there are some ghost dreams and some vampire dreams, and they're all complete and lovely and cool.

I've got a heinous commute that I make a little more palatable by listening to audio books. I've managed to get through the biggies (Moby Dick, War and Peace, The Iliad) and indulged myself with crappy fantasy series (Song of Ice and Fire, Wheel of Time). But right now, I'm going through a streak of true crime, and I'm finding something bothersome.

Now is not a good time to be unmotivated. I've just finished two novels and have put together a new crit group whose first meeting is January 15th. I've committed to myself to get a certain amount of editing done so that the submission process can start.

I know what it is, though. I'm allowing myself to be deluged by other people's process. Many of my friends are writers, I'm part of several online groups and I get a few writing magazines, every one of which is deeply involved in their own process and is not just willing but EAGER to tell me about it in depth.

I'm not talking here about the kind of reading that you do as a writer. I'm talking about what your third-grade teacher would have called "reading aloud." I have a special place in my heart for reading aloud and do it every chance that I get. If I'm at a party where there are children present, I'll sit down and read them a book. That way I'm doing something I love, interacting with the most-ignored party guests and avoiding the grownups who are normally more boring anyway. I volunteer to read my work at open mic events and workshops.

I've posted yesterday's interview, which you can find here. In it, I talk about my process, read from the first chapter of my new book, discuss my next work, and reveal where on my body I keep my tattoos. Anyone who's seen me already knows. Enjoy!

Tomorrow morning at 7:20am, I'll be on KFJC radio (89.7 FM in the Bay Area) reading from my new Nanovel, "Two Women and a Boat, to Say Nothing of Cthulhu." Feel free to listen in via their netcast. Ann Arbor has graciously invited the Nano gang back for another year, and I'm taking full advantage of it!

You know, normally I've got a schedule to keep. I check over the address list from the year before and make any necessary corrections on Thanksgiving weekend. I put the cards together and get everyone to sign them in the days between Thanksgiving and December 1. This year - it's mid-December and I have done NOTHING. I am looking at the blank page facing me and thinking "I have no idea what to say. Many things happened this year, but most of them are things I don't want to talk about.