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While I was at the beach this weekend for a house party with friends, I got a great idea for a book. I could see the whole book—murderer, victims, clues, red herrings, and the role the setting would play in the novel. It would be a house party gone horribly wrong.

The only problem? I can’t write that book right now.

My next Myrtle Clover book is due in early November. My next Memphis Barbeque book is due April 1.

There’s no way I can work a beach party into my Memphis book. It would be geographically challenging. :)

After the April due date, I have a November one for Penguin and have the plot for that book set already.

Soooo….I’m thinking I can’t write this book for about a year.

My memory? It’s awful.

Usually I just create a new Word file, sketch out my idea, name it, and save it out to another location (usually I’ll email myself the file….lazy, but I can always locate it.)

This time, though, there’s a lot of data that I need to capture and I don’t think I have time right now to write out a full synopsis. Plus the fact that I don’t like writing to outlines.

Today I’m going to try something new and see how it works. I’ve got a voice recorder and I’m going to talk out the plot and characters. I’m hoping that it’s going to get all of my thoughts and ideas down, but won’t be as “official” as an outline or synopsis. I might see how far I can talk it out.

It’s the saving of the voice recording that I’m not sure of. I’ll need to make sure it’s someplace I can find it again.

I’m hoping that when I listen to it again, the excitement in my voice will ignite the creative process again and make it a quick write.

Does anyone else use a voice recorder? How does it work for you?

Today, I should be on my way back home from a fun, hopefully relaxing, weekend at the beach (Isle of Palms, near Charleston). My wonderful parents took the children for my husband and me and we headed off with friends.

In preparation for the car ride to the point where my husband and I were handing off the kids to my folks, I went to the Blockbuster movie rental place and got several videos for them to watch on their little DVD players in the car.

This means the most relaxing car ride for the adults.

My sister and I got along extremely well in the car when we were kids. But we did get bored on the long drive to Macon, Georgia to see our grandmother. We’d play the license plate game, look for VW bugs (beetles, we called them), etc.

When I suggested the cow counting game to my son, he looked at me in disbelief. I explained, “No, it’s fun! You count as many cows as you can and if you pass a graveyard, you lose all your cows.”

“And Nana came up with this game?” he asked, stunned. Then, of course, I realized that the number of farms in the South had greatly decreased. And there aren’t too many cemeteries lining the interstate highways.

Mom had dated herself once more.

I’ve touched on this before, but I’m trying not to date my books. I have high hopes that they’ll live on for a few years in libraries, and I don’t want to draw people out of the story.

I did mention Twitter in passing for the Memphis book. I had to think about it, but decided it’s a strong enough pop culture reference that it’s going to stay on for a little while. It’s star is still rising. But that was the only thing I can really think of that will place my story in a particular place and time.

How about you? Do your characters ever Facebook? Tweet? Do you refrain from making social media references at all?

On Thursday, I had a completely different plan for my day. Since my deadline was Friday, I was going to leisurely take the day to read the complete manuscript again, with my revisions. I was going to read it in one sitting and correct any additions that jarred.

Instead:

I forgot my daughter’s dental appointment until it was practically time to hit the road.

I didn’t have time to rearrange carpool, so I drove it. One little girl cried the whole way to the elementary school because she hadn’t done her spelling homework. I’ve got to get back home to take my daughter to her dental appointment. “Sweetie? Why not go to the media center (what they call libraries at schools these days) and finish it up.” She won’t get out of the car. She’s sobbing hysterically. I walk her through the process of collecting herself, sitting inside the school’s library and finishing the homework. –15 minutes from the game plan.

I go to the dental appointment with my daughter. –45 minutes from my plan, since I’d forgotten the appointment. Her dental appliance is checked and ruled fine.

Daughter realizes in dentist chair that her math homework might be wrong? Or she might not understand it. We sit in the lobby of the dentist office and I try to 1) Understand the homework and then 2) Explain it to her. -15 minutes.

Brownie Scout meeting is that night. I’m not the leader for the evening, but I have the craft box. Does the craft box have Elmer’s Glue? asks my co-leader. I have to locate the craft box in the crazy closet under my stairs. I try to find the ziplock of Elmer’s Glue. -15 minutes.

Neighbor calls. Conflict with the afternoon middle school carpool and the elementary school drama class. Can I take an extra child home? Sure. -35 minutes.

Drama class lets out late. Some weird forms we have to fill out that are Very Important. I sign the one for my child and the child that I’m taking home. -10 minutes.

Come home. Daughter is starving. I give her a bowl of sliced mixed fruit—watermelon, grapes, cantaloupe, and honeydew melon. Her cross-bite braces fall out. This, I might add, on the same day of her dental appointment. I call the pediatric dentist…they’re closed and won’t open up again until Monday. I am very irritated. My daughter is very upset. I drive over there…maybe they’re there and aren’t answering their phones? A dental staff meeting? No, they’re not. -45 minutes.

I’ve calmed down my daughter. I fix supper, feed the kids, and I go to the Brownie meeting with the glue. The co-leader’s helpers for the evening have not shown up. Because I’m the other leader, I stay there until the other helpers show. -25 minutes (and very high blood pressure gauged. )

Everyone has these days come along…whether you’re in an office or retired, or a mom of small kids. I wrote when I could. I read the revisions when I could. Unfortunately, this day was out of my control.

So….we’ll stay up later than we planned. Get up a little earlier. It’s important…to us. Don’t play catch-up every night, but this is writing. And for everyone addicted to the writing process, we’ll squeeze some time out of the craziness to get it done.

It’s been a busy week, jam-packed with a revision deadline, children’s extra-curriculars, errands, small household emergencies of various types and descriptions, houseguests, and preparation for an upcoming short vacation.

I grabbed my grins where I could find them.

Today, for your blog-reading pleasure, a compilation of funnies. My sense of humor was a little twisted this week, but hope you’ll find them worth a smile, too.

Amusing quotations, courtesy of: http://ow.ly/uezD

• I love being a writer. What I can’t stand is the paperwork.
  Peter De Vries
• A catless writer is almost inconceivable. It’s a perverse taste, really, since it would be easier to write with a herd of buffalo in the room than even one cat; they make nests in the notes and bite the end of the pen and walk on the typewriter keys.
  Barbara Hollan

A spoof in The New Yorker about the demise of in-house publicity at publishing houses: http://bit.ly/4n1Vmr : Features a “letter” from an intern that’s been hired to take the place of the publicity department. She starts the letter to the author by praising the writer’s book, Clancy the Doofus Beagle: a Love Story and finishes the letter by saying she’s “looking forward to collaborating with you to make A History of Moorish Architecture, 1200-1492 the biggest success it can be.”

In between, the intern says soothingly, “Don’t worry if you think you’re not on Facebook, because you actually are. Jason enrolled you when you signed the contract last year, or at least he was supposed to, and he told Sarah Williams he did before he had to retire and Sarah left for nursing school. You currently have 421 Friends, 17 Pending Requests, 8 Pokes, 5 Winks, and 3 Proposals of “Marriage.”

An article in the Huffington Post entitled “Book Pitch Gone Bad: How to Piss Off Those You Most Want to Befriend : http://tinyurl.com/ybmjelo . It’s really a fairly serious article, but the publicist was so outrageous and clueless, it made me smile. I thought the title was funny, too.

I don’t remember why I was watching this video in the first place, but it’s really funny (and helpful, too for those of you facing a face-to-face agent pitch at a writing conference) and features several industry professionals in it: