Live or Let Live

This post is a combination of Maven Darcy's topic yesterday about making characters feel like real people, Maven Carrie's post about making scenes feel like a real book, and the RWR's recent article on how much first-hand research is enough.

To give a brief history: When I first thought about writing a book, I had one genre in mind -- romance. I did have a choice between contemporary and historical, but at the time it didn't seem like much of a choice. I could either spend a LOT of time doing historical research or I could guess what it's like to be a young hot single struggling to find a date. (My experience with contemporary romance was limited to chick lit.) I knew nothing about the latter, so I delved into studying the former. While meeting my historical muse, however, my life changed. Suddenly facing tons of free time, with no outside restrictions, I decided to carpe diem and find out what the Dark Side had been doing all my life. I knew why I'd never tried being cosmopolitan: I was afraid of the unknown. Sneakers and sofas were as familiar to me as weekends spent planted in front of the tv. But I had a lot of friends with busy, hip, social calendars and I knew they would be more than happy to guide me through the perilous alleys of the social networks I wanted to explore. (Both literally and figuratively...Seattle has some cool clubs with alley entrances.)

Slowly but surely, I did get out of my house. I met people -- and found I liked people -- I otherwise would never have come into contact with. Through them, I discovered having a life is hella fun. But one day I had a tilting realization. For the first time,* my* life was more interesting than reading (or writing) about other people's imaginary lives. And that put a real damper on my motivation to find time to write.

It's a different problem than not having time to write. It's a willful disinterest in *making* time. I'm still adamant about keeping to my weekly schedule, but the shiny hasn't worn off the Friday night lights yet. I wonder if there are others out there experiencing the same problem, especially since my problem isn't limited to pure social activity. I have an alien, burning desire to become adept at snowboarding. I couldn't even tell you why, other than that I'm sick of having to turn down the annual trip to Whistler because it's not cost or time-effective. (And probably my recent foray into becoming more athletic has helped ease away the fear of "too physically difficult.")

This partying thing is a hard life, I'm telling you.

The good news is, all my experiences and experiments will help my geek lit when I finally have the patience to sit still again. No more need to adapt Sex and the City-isms to create my cosmo world...VHM will be first-hand, baby.

YOUR TURN: How do you deal with those days you'd rather be shopping or hanging with girlfriends? What do you tell your pals when they're creeping into your writing time? Do you read books for pleasure or do you always have a writing-related ulterior motive? What do you do when reality is more interesting than fiction?