Hey, Where's Perry?

Summer Vacation! Yay?

Caitlin is off until Summer School begins next week. Since we ran around a lot yesterday, she pretty much gets the day off (except for Speech Therapy). Right now, she's watching mass quantities of Phineas and Ferb on Disney Channel.

This "vacation" week includes three meetings and a trip to Children's Memorial Hospital for two doctor's appointments. Meh.

The Chicks Dig Time Lords reading/signing in Milwaukee exceeded everybody's expectations. Daniel from Boswell's Books was flabbergasted by the turn out. Over 85 people came. The store sold out of books and had to issue bookplates. A group of fans brought fan art for Lynne, Tara, and Carole: a photo montage poster of cosplayers reading Chicks. We also found out from Carole that RTD finished reading his copy. We didn't ask if he liked it. It's better to not know. :-)

I no longer know how to react to this. The popularity of the book is so beyond all of our expectations.

Writing Rituals

Now that the drama is dying down around here, I can do another aspiring writer post. This one comes from a discussion I had with tim_pratt about getting into your head space as a writer.

In my wasted youth, this was a fairly pretentious process. I would fire up my ancient, borrowed Mac, light a bunch of candles, and smoke like a chimney as I waited for the Muse to flow. Like many of you, I also wrote poetry in battered notebooks at coffeehouses, often at a carefully selected table so that I could be properly observed by artistic types who might find this very, very fascinating (like you do at 19).

Many years later, my rituals are only about the writing. I need these rituals. My brain tends to race like a racing thing. I'm prone to distractions. I find that writing rituals help me focus on fiction.

I begin by leaving the house. If I'm home, I end up doing every other task. I can easily fill my day with cleaning, repairs, yard work, and Caitlin administrivia. So, I still go to coffeehouses. The difference now is that I bring a laptop and find a quiet corner. I then settle in with a mug of black coffee and my iPod.

So, what do you do to get into your writing head space?