INK had a wonderful time with David Levine last evening, so much so I'm almost willing to bet everyone in the INK group probably wrote something afterward, or at least spent time thinking hard about writing. Man, his analogies make everything make sense. I'm purposely going to ask him to explain so much of the world I don't understand (like math maybe, er, or maybe not) over the next few months, or at least toss out a question here and there until he starts avoiding me which might happen because I mean really, how many analogies can one person have in their back pocket?

I'll bet he's got tons.

Anyway, I was just dazzled. He's a great speaker.

I didn't write anything today but I sure as heck-fire thought hard about it. Almost got the Craftsman tool cabinet I lust after with all my heart and soul like though. So close. Still can't justify the cost (plus the cost of all the tools I want to fill it with). Someday.

It has begun, that time of year again. Time when our part of the country starts thinking about the upcoming season and checking supplies. Calls are being made to manufacturers, date books are being checked, budgets are being carefully gone over to allow for the extra weekend costs. It's time to pull the covers off and get in there with rags and polish, toothbrushes and Dremels. It's the start of car show season and year three in which I won't be participating.

I've found a new challenge, a new love, that's called writing.

A year and a half ago, I began what I refer to as The Car Novel. The Car Novel is a fictional tale about the culture and people in the sport of showing fancy-shmancy cars. It's a world I know very, very well.

After cruising along wonderfully, right around the 60,000 word mark, I hit a snag. Actually, someone else hit it for me and the lack of logic at a key turning point stopped me cold. Last November, as part of National Novel Writing Month, something I have participated in the past four years, I went through every chapter thus written of The Car Novel, all twenty-three of them and added rewrite/edit notes in red pen so I could jump back in at some point and work toward finishing the damned thing. Each page looks to have been dipped in red ink. But I'm convinced I will finish it. In fact, I promised myself this would be the year.

But then, winter comes to our area with snow and ice and people garage their cars and spend the winter ogling speed shop catalogs and dreaming of warm, summer days. I get lazy and don't think about cars or The Car Novel even though my characters in the story scream often at me from the back of my mind. Those who have read a chapter here or there know of which characters specifically I speak.

This evening I visited the Portland Roadster Show in downtown Portland, Oregon. In 2006, I took a local club to their first 1st place finish for overall display. The year before, I won my class for individual category. I met a lot of people there, people who run such things and have every year for the past fifty-two, and I made a lot of friends. Tonight, I ran into several of those friends and we started up conversations as if we had been talking nonstop all along, without my two year absence gap.

It was exactly what I hoped would happen. You see, I went there with a plan. Walking up and down rows of cars, collecting dozens of show flyers for the coming season, talking to old Hot Rod Council friends, drooling over hanging out at the SoCal booth, it all came back, everything I need to pick back up The Car Novel . . . when I'm ready this coming summer, after finishing the short stories I'm currently working on, when warm weather arrives and the days dawn with dreams of dewy morning registrations and the fragrance of tire gloss and car wax drifts in the air.

I must have needed some away time from my current WIP even though that away time seemed to be sucking my will to continue with it. For as much as I hated the story yesterday, a little chop here, a little revision there and I'm back to kind of liking it.

Still, it's going to be a long short story, something I'm not entirely comfortable with. I like the short and sweet, hit them before hard before they realize what a load of crap it may be, kind of story. Two thousand words, maybe three at the most. This one might end up around seventy-five hundred. It's also requiring lots of explanation and from everything I've read, that's usually not good. Still again, when I employ many of the tricks I see in other speculative fiction works, I leave my main critic wondering what the hell's going on.

I'm not going to worry about that just now. Just write the damned story. That's where my head is at. A thousand words today. They say every writer either hates their work or they love it. Today, I definitely love it.

Watching the evening news tonight, a story about the severe drought in the U.S. south perked up my ears. Lake Lanier in George is drying up if you haven't already seen the report. My eyes went to the manuscript before me. Lake Lanier. Yep, there it was. One of my secondary characters in my car novel comes from a wealthy family who builds communities around the usually beautiful Lake Lanier area. Hmm, that information may have to be adjusted in the final draft depending on the situation down there.

Last week, I was in Barnes & Noble bookstore; not a local one but one across the river in Oregon. As I browsed the markdown book aisles, I ran across the obligatory 'exotic automobile' area and, I'm not kidding here, the exact second I picked up a book on Super Cars, the music on the store's speakers switched from some pop ditty to "Lil Darlin'" by The Diamonds. It's a tune from 1957, a favorite amoung some car enthusiasts, myself included, and is featured briefly in my car novel. I've gone years upon years without hearing that song anywhere but my own music library, yet there it played, out of the blue in Barnes & Noble...but only, I'm convinced, after I touched that car book.

Things like this, little things that make me think of a piece of writing I'm usually involved with at that time, happen a lot to me. I've got a list of other coincidences that relate to the current novel I'm working with but the two above are the ones that come readily to mind. And rather than think of them all, as odd or unusual as they might seem, as nothing more than coincidences, I can't help but see them as motivational pushes from my muse. It's odd but works for me.

Go on, Car Muse. I'm listening.