Portrait of the artist as a very young woman.

I liberated a family photo album from my dad's house this past weekend. More accurately, hauled it off after my friend Linda caught my attention with "hey, what's this?" while we were both sorting through assorted objects outside a room nobody had used for anything, for years.

Big. Square. Brown with a gold curlicue thing on the top. I'd always remembered the "real" family photo album as notebook sized and orange brocade (it was the seventies, okay?) but as soon as my aunt dusted the thing off, yeah, there it was. The other photo album. Time machine, oh my.

Some, like this one, were easy to figure out. Me, in the driveway of our house in Bedford, NY. It was on the same page with others -- a slightly older me standing by a rhododendron bush (I only remember the name of the bush because Dad liked posing me and my mother by the thing about a billion times) then my mom standing by the same bush. The two of us together. Some Mexican relatives I had to have my aunt identify. There's a picture of two young women in early 1900s dress that neither my aunt nor I could identify. I'm thinking possibly my mother's mother and aunt, or another acquaintance of similar vintage.

Looking through these pictures, it's pretty darned obvious I am not my parents' genetic child, though it took until I was 22 for Dad and I to openly talk about me being adopted.

I'm scanning a bunch of these pictures to computer to make family gifts, and it's quite the trip. I've noticed that the "will you take the darned picture already" look on my face is the same from toddlerhood to now; I've never liked having my picture taken. Of course I have to come up with an author photo for Uncial...think I can send them this one?

Wow, has it really been nearly a month?

[IMG]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v72/Unzadi/Olivia.jpg[/IMG]

Olivia kitty says if I'd put her in charge of my blog, this would not happen. She's probably right. Cats can often be furry day planners, and I think they have a lot to teach us (okay, me) about punctuality.

Once again, real life chewed me up and spit me back out. Not always fun, but we get through it.

A big step in getting through it has been reclaiming my home office. Like a garden gone to seed, it had long since gone to storage. It didn't get that way overnight, so it's going to take a while to get it back to what it should be, but I've staked my claim with laptop and Mrs. Tea (albeit sitting atop my Caboodle makeup case until I can figure out how to get the miniscule power cord to reach a normal outlet) and with a small change in schedule, I've carved out some time to get my groove back.

Of course there are still vestiges of crud that need to be dealt with, but all in good time. I have the small tinned candle I got from last year's Let Your Imagination Take Flight conference on my desk, and the new rule is that if the candle is lit, I am writing. Doesn't have to be good, doesn't have to be usable, doesn't even have to have anything to do with the manuscript I'm currently creating, but it does have to be written. Discipline first, then content will follow.

So far this week, I've managed to fill several pages with notes on old Highlander episodes and what I think is going on in songs off a recently rediscovered CD. Let me tell you, this office is archealogy central at the moment. Kind of funny to look at things that once held my interest, but no longer do, as I revise stories that will be rereleased this spring -- but then again, I need who I was to be who I am.

That, my dears, is the deep thought for the day.

I found a time machine in my dad's house

No, not the Outlander sort, but the kind that comes in an old box in the back of a spare bedroom closet. Sunday afternoons mean going through things at the old family homestead, and this spare room used to be my room for a while, though now I'm quite comfy calling it "the middle bedroom" as my aunt has started tagging it. But that's another story.

The box was behind some other boxes, under an old duffel bag, so when I opened it like all the others, ready to sort into keep/sell or give/toss piles, I was surprised to find file folders. Okay, papers of Dad's? No, papers of mine. Onionskin typed pages. A file of fanfic ideas, the start of a spec script, and the first few pages of a historical I'd started years ago and then lost.

To be sure, I've improved a lot since those days, and I'm not doing fanfiction, but writing for the historical romance market. Still, there are a few things in there that I had lost along the way and am glad to have back.

My outline for the spec script was quite similar to the detailed outline format I thought I had only discovered this year. Who knew that I had it over a decade ago. Don't know what wiped it from my mind, but it worked then and works now. The historical pages reminded me how much I used to like to go for a big emotional impact right at the start, before I'd thought I had to ease into things, that what I wanted to do was too rough somehow, not nice, or what have you. Again, something I've come back to. It may have been a circular path, but I'm sure one that was needed.

Perhaps those earlier days were a scouting expedition of sorts. Maybe they were practice, or maybe seeds to be planted and harvested in their own time. I did take the files with me, to look over, see what I want to tweak, and what needs to go line a birdcage without delay. Not sure what will go where yet, but it did give me a much needed spark to keep on doing what I'm doing. Because nobody else can tell my stories for me.

Some days we fight the good fight and get trampled anyway.

Yeah, writing did not go well today. Part of it is some of the current ick of real life and the tiredness that comes from said ick. The rest of it, I think, is discipline. Maybe there are a few rogue particles of it that are due to something else. Lack of Diet Coke, perhaps?

Still, I've done some of my most prolific writing during equally stressy times when my own health was not as good as it is now. Seeing as how I do not intend to return to serious illness as a writing aid, it's got to be something else. I'm going to focus on the discipline angle, in that case.

I'll start by quoting Bishop T.D. Jakes -- Whatever you feed, lives. Whatever you starve, dies.

Easy enough, pretty basic, and yet, something I had to remind myself about, so that does say something. Butt in chair (cat on lap optional, but likely)and fingers on keyboard. Doesn't have to be good. Doesn't have to be usable. Doesn't have to be for this project. Only has to be.

I'm in the middle of a Philippa Gregory glom at the moment, even though I have a gorgeous stack of books for review glaring at me. Gloms happen, and this one caught me unawares, but happily so.

Some friends and I had decided to read a book together and discuss via email. They settled on Philippa Gregory's The Other Bolyen Girl. I love Tudor, so okay. Really wanted a romance, but hey, Tudor. No luck at the library, discretionary funds said inxay on the adesizetray, but I did have the Wideacre trilogy waiting for me in my TBR mountain range. I followed the twisted and evil Beatrice's legacy through three generations, and then turned to a reread of A Respectable Trade, which had given me the impetus to include such trade in one of my WIPs. Then after a frantic hunt, finally found Fallen Skies, set in 1920s England rather than the Georgian age of the other titles, but hey, Gregory. Plus it appeals to the part of me that will always ache with love for Brideshead Revisited and sniffle at pictures of Castle Howard (because I know it's really Brideshead, and poor, poor Charles. Sob. But a happy sob.)

I'm halfway through that at the moment, and last night's library visit netted me Ms. Gregory's 17th century duo, Earthly Joys and The Virgin Earth. They also had another Gregory, The Wise Woman, which I purposely left on the shelf, because if I took it, that would mean I wouldn't have any more Gregory novels to read. Other than the royal books, and I can't do historical biographies right now, not for the life of me. At present, I'm more than happy to follow the adventures of Stephen, the WWI veteran and lawyer who has what we would now call post-traumatic stress disorder, and Lily, the spirited singer who has decided she's not going to acknowledge the war because it's boring and dumb and she doesn't like it. Will they have a HEA? I have no idea, and if you konw, shush. Do not tell me; I want to find out on my own.

See, if the first two Wideacre books had been able to have HEAs (and no, I am not advocating that anyone should look amongst their sibling groups for romantic partners) or if Frances and Mehuru of A Respectable Trade had been able to have HEA, those would have been perfect romances. So it serves me well to study them.

Along with all of that, I'm delving into some of the old school romances I missed the first time out. I recently finished Love's Tender Fury by Jennifer Wilde and have some notes to make on that one. Apparently the heroine went on to have two more books of her own, though I'm not sure if the same gent was along for the ride; we'll see when I can hunt my copies of the sequels down.

Sure, I'm getting some good discussion going with friends both in person and online, but there's another benefit -- remembering why I fell crazy in love with historical romance in the first place. Especially the deeply emotional, meaty kind. Granted, that's not what's in the greatest demand these days, so it's easy, as Camilla posted here, to get jaded. Only jaded doesn't get the books written. Reconnecting with that love of writing so that it translates into actual words on page/screen does. Inspiration plus discipline makes for a winning combination. At least for me.