Motivation?

Currently Reading: Finished the DS 9 trilogy. I guess I'm getting burned out on the sci-fi, because I picked up the next series, Star Trek: A New Hope and had zero interest after the 2nd chapter. So I picked up Jamie's book, The Duchess and the Dragon, and read it. Very good! I will definitely get copies for my sister and grandmother! Her Wind Dancer comes out in January, so I'm caught up finally.

Next up in the print books: Anna of Byzantium, by Tracy Barrett.

E-book: As I said, I finally was able to buy Ashley Ladd's The Perfect Gift and Brynn's Redemtion: Incubus. So I have plenty of reading material again!

What motivates us to write?

Music?

Deadlines?

Characters screaming in your head?

I've already discovered deadlines send me into panic mode; ie: NaNo last year and my Caveman deadline. I start off nice and steady, but then panic set in and the procrastinator/control freak in me took over. I had to finally just submit the thing, else I was going to procrastinate my way into missing the deadline.

And at NaNo last year, my wip was going smoothly, when all of a sudden the story came to a natural conclusion. Ummm...okay; it's too short. So I kept going, and then another natural conclusion reared its head. But once again...too short. So I literally wrote a bunch of 'diary' words..."this thing wants to end but it is too short. I need to add a bunch of words in order to make the word count but my muse is exhausted and nothing more is flowing in my brain..." type of thing. At the end, I accomplished the 50K words, but my creativity was fried.

Last year at this time, my fingers were typing as fast as the words would flow. I resented any interruptions, even to the point of leaving the house with my notebook and holing up at Starbucks for an hour or two while my teens did their homework on the computer and kept an eye on the baby.

This summer, several ideas popped into my brain, and I dutifully wrote them down. But one chapter later, the characters left! I have seven wips, all ranging from one page to four chapters. And nobody's talking to me. I'll write a sentence here, three there, but nothing substantial.

In the meantime, my house is clean; I need to finish going through my storage unit; I'm fighting with my computer. JavaScript keeps becoming disabled, which drives me crazy when I'm trying to buy books and the page won't load all the way. I ended up saving my basket (after the 3rd attempt!) at TEB yesterday and waiting an hour before logging in again so I could pay for it!

I had hoped once my kids were back in school, the writing frenzy would return. But apparently I'm supposed to do something else right now.

Just wish I knew what it was.