There’s been another serious case of tunnel vision at Grace Manor these days. With three new manuscripts finished and ready to sub or being subbed and another one about to be written during the month of April for Camp NaNoWriMo, it’s not likely to end any time soon.

‘Did you take out the recyclables?’ my husband asks.

‘They’re in the refrigerator,’ I reply.

He’s used to the drill by now. It happens several times a year and with major shifts in my writing landscape taking place, it’s happening even more than usual.

‘Are you hungry?’ He asks.

‘I’ll have some next week,’ I reply, from my position in front of the monitor all hunched over and bleary-eyed, tap, tap, taping at the keyboard.

I pour plain hot water from the mocha maker because I forgot to put in the coffee. Never mind. I slap a teabag in the cup of hot water and go back to the WIP.

Spiders have taken residence in a number of nooks and crannies. They know the odds of dusting happening in the near future are slim, and the safety of their homes is pretty much guaranteed. Can’t tell you how delighted I was to hear that J. K. Rowling’s great productivity came from “living in squalor” and not cleaning house. I feel vindicated in my neurotic sense of focus!

My presence on social media has dwindled to the occasional sharing and liking of other people’s stuff. My list of unanswered emails is growing longer every day and I haven’t done a newsletter in months.

Tunnel Vision. Yep, my old friend. When the Muse is in residence poking me with her big stick, it’s like I’ve temporarily left the planet, and for all practical purposes, I have. She jabs me in the ribs; I write. That is all. I’m sucked mercilessly into another dimension, the dimension of the story. The thing about the dimension of the story is that it’s a whole lot easier for me to go there than it is for me to come back. These days the Muse grudgingly allows for gym breaks and walks because she knows they get the results she wants. Beyond that, it’s a crap shoot.

I’m in the world of the novel now, and whenever I go there, it’s hard to say when I’ll get back home again. Early on I learned that one novel seldom comes by itself. It usually brings friends who aren’t patient to wait until the house gets clean or the garbage gets taken out. Add to that the fact that the novels have a good bit of love, sex, intrigue, and people I’d like to be, and I’m very likely to linger as long as possible. In fact, I bet if you could go someplace similar right now, you would, wouldn’t you?

Come on, be honest! Everyone who’s ever read a good book gets the chance to follow the writer down the rabbit hole of Tunnel Vision. We all go there willingly and happily while the spiders take up residence and the recycling accumulates. We’re disappointed when it’s not quite the world we’d hoped for. We’re equally disappointed when it’s more than we could have imagined. When that happens, we don’t want to leave. We want to stay with those characters we’ve grown so fond of and take up residence in that place that now feels like home. We’ve grown used to the excitement, the adventure, the sex, the love, the intrigue, and we’ve especially grown used to the opportunity to, for a little while, be someone else.

The land of Tunnel Vision is also the land of multiple personalities. In my novel, I get to be ALL of the characters. They all whisper in my ear and tell me their sordid secrets and their darkest fantasies. Then I, like an evil gossip columnist, splash their inner workings all over the written page for the world to see. Bwa ha ha ha ha! I get to do that because I’m the most powerful person in their world. In fact, in their world, I’m god. K D giveth and K D taketh away!

So, I’ve come back from the world of Tunnel Vision just long enough to cook an egg, grab an apple, write a blog post
and ignore the spiders. Consider this a postcard from the world of Medusa’s Consortium. It’s my way of saying ‘having a great time, wish you were here.’ If you’ve enjoyed In The Flesh, the serial, through the months, then I hope you have visions in your head of exactly the world I’m talking about. I promise a detailed account to come … maybe in a newsletter … but then again maybe not. In the meantime, you’ll just have to settle for a blog post and a little tease now and again and enjoy my filthy weekend serial The Psychology of Dreams 101 until I get back.