Celebrities put their pants on one leg at a time

I spent 1.5 hours on the phone with a singer/songwriter/musician tonight and it was a pleasure. He has such a great sense of humor and a decidedly wry sense of the absurd. He's also older than I thought and yet he does not seem his age; he seems much younger. This is one of the pleasures of interviewing someone, seeing life from another viewpoint, through another's eyes for a few moments. What's really amazing is that we are very much alike and we both share the same dream -- to have enough money to spend the rest of our lives traveling the world and writing -- him writing music and me writing words. It looks a lot like I've made a new friend, someone else for me to learn from.

One of the things I tell writers all the time is to cut to the chase and get to the heart of the action in the first page. Thinking over one of my novels, I've decided to cut out the prologue and filter the information in smaller bites throughout the story. I also need to beef up some of the characterization on one of the main characters, bring him into the story sooner, give him more of a stake in things and muddy the waters early on. I'll probably end up with a 100,000-word story, but that's not a bad thing in this day and time.

The Evil One has always told me he wants to grow up to be a bum. He said it again yesterday when he hugged me just before we went our separate ways. That gave me an idea about a story, bolstered by my conversation with MJ today. He said he would like to be a millionaire bum, someone people wouldn't look twice at, someone people would label as a bum at first glance and discount him.

I've been researching romance novels and am going to take an old friend's advice to write paranormals, but also mainstream women's fiction, too. The creative juices are flowing and it takes all my energy to stick to my regular job instead of sitting in front of my laptop and writing all day and most of the night. I didn't realize how much I have missed writing, creating, living in those worlds until I bought this laptop and let me fingers do the talking. All the roads converge at this point and there is nothing but horizon to the end of the world. I am traveling that road and I won't be traveling it alone. Thank the gods for good company and good friends, old and new.