BICHOK

Heather Hiestand/Anh Leod

Currently: Just got home, very sleepy.

Mood: Is sleepy a mood?

So this is Butt in Chair, Hands on Keyboard topic month?

The only thing that's ever kept me writing steadily is enthusiasm. For a while I thought what kept me writing was getting paid to do so, but that doesn't seem to be it. I've always written double the daily page count when I was actually enjoying a story, versus writing exactly to the market. That's not to say there aren't points in just about every book where I want to give up, but some books just make me happy to write them. My book One Juror Down, for instance, wrote itself over a summer. And when I wrote the sequel, Two on the Hunt, I was happy the entire time, remembering my research trips with friend Carol to the marina where the book was set (fictionalized first of course, because of those pesky kidnappers, murderers and vampire wannabes running around).

When I'm not getting any writing done, my secret technique is to go to Starbucks with a friend and write. Usually I go with Delle Jacobs, who has much more sitting at Starbucks tolerance than I do. We bring our laptops or Alphasmarts or other fancy devices and write. The baristas even know us now. Usually that carries through to at least a few days of productivity before we need to go again. Give it a try!