I was thinking about what it means to be a true "starving artist" today, so I went ahead and typed the terms into a Google search. I got a lot of weird hits, but I did find one site that sums it up pretty well. Check out David Sherman's Progression of the Starving Artist.

I have to agree with his assessment. Now, that I'm officially a married woman, I can no longer consider myself a true starving artist. Thankfully, there's another person around to buy food when I'm living paycheck to paycheck. Now, "writing full-time" is a concept under negotiation with my husband rather than a dim fantasy that may never see fruition.

On and interesting side note, or to completely digress, I read in Cosmo this month about the new "housewife." It's becoming a trend for modern, well-educated career-women to get married and let their husbands support them. I don't know how I feel about this. I don't think I like it. Mostly because that sounds like the life, and I'm ashamed to admit it. I grew up wanting to be independent, not relying on a man for anything. That's the kind of woman I write about. So how dare I say that all I really want to do is stay home in my newly decorated house and wait for my hubby to return?

Luckily, as a writer, I'll always be able to say I'm a career-woman. Writing is a career that is best done from the home. Years ago, when I was starting out and hopped from job to job... I was never unemployed... I was merely a full-time writer.

So, either way, it's nice to say good-bye to the days of being a starving artist. Even though I became published early on in my career, it's very difficult to support yourself on sporadic advances and two rounds of royalty checks a year. I've always had day jobs. Many of them. But, that's another story...

Any writer will tell you that's the single most common question reporters or interviews like to ask. It's such a strange question... to us, anyway, because, for writers, ideas are never the problem.

I'm always getting ideas. My real challenge is to collect them before they flit away with the breeze. Unfortunately, the ideas never seem to be brilliant bursts of inspiration for my work-in-progress... they always belong to some future story that I may or may not ever tell.

Yesterday, my husband and I were visiting his brother's new house and they were discussing gardening and the kinds of weird things you dig up when you first start planting. This immediately started my mind churning about a future character digging up something mysterious that I could build an entire plot around. Perhaps it would even be a McGuffin.

I was recently inspired with a book idea from reading a magazine article written from the perspective of a member of the paparazzi. I have to admit that I think these people are lower than dirt. Based on this, I couldn't resist trying to get inside this person's head. What would make someone choose this career path? How could I make a reader sympathize with that person? And since I write romance, who would be the last person that should fall in love with this character. And from there, I was off and running...

Each morning I take both a train and a subway before walking five blocks to my office building. I'm always passing some unique character who should be captured for a book. I don't know why I don't constantly whip out a notepad and describe them for future use... but, I guess if I did do that, I'd never make it anywhere.

\muh-GUF-in\ also MacGuffin

n: A device that helps propel the plot in a story but is of little importance in itself.

[Coined by film director Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980).]

"A McGuffin could be a person, an object, or an event that characters
of a story are interested in but that, intrinsically, is of little concern.
For example, in Hitchcock's movie North by Northwest, thugs are on the look out for a character named George Kaplan. Roger Thornhill, an ad executive, gets mistaken for Kaplan and so he is chased instead. Meanwhile Thornhill
himself tries to find Kaplan who doesn't even exist." --Wordsmith.org

I love words of the day. It's fun to put them in sentences then try working them into normal conversations. In this particular case, I'm not as interested in working the word McGuffin into conversation as trying to work the plot device into a future story.

I guess the McGuffin concept is not unlike the red herring concept, in which you want to force the reader to look off to the left while you send the story's true villain off to the right. With a McGuffin you can build a whole story around an object (jewels, secret documents, a package) that will ultimately have no significance other than to bring characters together or send them off on a wild goose chase.

I love it! It's one plot device I haven't tried yet. It won't fit into my work-in-progress, but I'm definitely going to keep it in mind for the future. I have an idea for an adventure novel next. That just screams for a McGuffin.

Leave it to Alfred Hitchcock to come up with all the great ideas.

Everyone says writing skills are like muscles... use 'em or lose 'em.

Well, I'll be the first to stand up and say I don't like using my muscles, either. I'm a couch-potato at heart. Therefore, even knowing I should write every day to keep my writing skills sharp, I don't always do it.

At least, I didn't realize that I was writing every day. I thought I had to write fiction or book chapters to be "writing." The fact of the matter is, this is the information age of e-mails, text-messaging, instant messaging, blogs, message boards and the like. Based on this, I do write every day. I express myself, possibly, even more in type than I do verbally. It's the nature of business.

So, this assuages my writing every day guilt just a bit. Now, all I have to do is try and wax poetic when forwarding e-mails and discussing The Amazing Race 5 on message boards.

I haven't been writing a lot in recent months due to planning my April wedding, having my honeymoon in Hawaii and other general life issues.

But, while my husband and I were in Hawaii, we discussed the possibility of my writing full-time. I wasn't expecting him to take me seriously, but he did. John made me an offer I couldn't refuse. If I complete two more books, I could quit my day job.

My last book, Wedding Bell Blues, was published in May and that was the last book I'd had under contract for HarperCollins. Now, for the first time in years, I'm out of contract. A free agent.

With my normal slacker mentality, there is a strong possiblity I might never finish another book. To be honest, if it weren't for my series of contractual obligations over the years, I don't know if I would have finished any books beyond the first one. Not because I don't love to write. I do. It's just so hard. Life is hectic. And... I'm so lazy. I hate to admit it, but I'm the worst procrastinator ever.

So, with the dangling bait of quitting my day job, I have strong motivation to keep writing books.

Time to write.