Traveling, Reading

By Lisabet Sarai

I am writing this two weeks ahead of time because on the day it posts, I’ll be far away from my home and my computer. I’ll be traveling for twelve days, and I won’t be able to access the blog, even to reply to comments.

So far in advance, I’m not sure what I’ll be reading, but I know I will be reading. Indeed, reading is one of the joys of being on the road. A fourteen hour plane trip provides a lot of opportunities to lose oneself in a book—not to mention the hours waiting to board or to make connections. I may be doing an all-day train ride as well. Meanwhile, since I’ll be in a rural area at least part of the time, I expect that there will few activities in the evenings to compete with reading.

What will I bring with me? Well, my tablet, of course, stuffed with at least two dozen titles, many of them erotica. Thank heavens for e-books. They definitely lighten my luggage!

I’ll also be carrying George R.R. Martin’s A Dance with Dragons, the last (so far) volume in the Game of Thrones series. I’ve been rationing my consumption of that series, saving it for long journeys. I read the first half of this volume (five hundred plus pages) on my last international odyssey. I’ll finish it on this one, then feel frustrated, I’m sure, because just like real life, these books never tie up the loose ends.

That won’t be enough, though. After a while, I get tired of reading on a screen. I’m sure I’ll want to bring at least a few more print books, even with our limited luggage allowance (low cost airlines... argh!) But which ones?

At the moment, there are all sorts of candidates on my bookshelf. Riven Rock by T.C. Boyle. Sweet Caress by William Boyd. Books by Umberto Eco and John Crowley, Thomas Pynchon and Salman Rushdie, not to mention half a dozen titles from Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum series and (as a stark contrast) Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. Lots of less well known writers, too—we have access to some excellent used book stores!

One needs to use special criteria choosing books for travel. They need to long enough to justify carrying them, but small enough not to take up too much space. I look for books that will really hook me and pull me in, to distract me from delays, backaches, hunger, bad smells, and other inevitabilities of travel. At the same time, for me at least, a travel book can’t be too intense, complex or intellectual. I’d rather read those books at home, where I have a wider selection and can put them down to pick up something else.

Anyway, I really can’t tell you in any detail what I’ll be reading as you read this. Very likely, though, I’ll be enjoying it.

There Are No Mistakes

My "career" as a writer of dirty stories has been one mistake after another.

It all starts with my first release, Autumn Fire. When I wrote that novel, which is an M/M erotic romance, I was thinking, "How hard could it be?" I'm an experienced writer (though to that point rarely published), having worked on my writing in different genres for more than a decade. I figured if I could write a grand sci-fi epic, I could write a short novel about two dudes who fall in love and fuck often.

Wow, was I ever mistaken.

I had done some research, read a number of M/M titles, and even had a chat with an agent who represents the genre -- so, really, I should have had a great head-start.  I wrote the novel and while I acknowledge it is heavy with passive voice (which is something I have finally managed to excise from my writing), the story holds together. Two guys fall in love and fuck.

But what I missed in my research was the difference between erotica and erotic romance. What I had written was erotica disguised as erotic romance, marketed to erotic romance readers. The main character is far too promiscuous for romance readers and some of the sex acts described appeal more to gay men rather than straight women (who tend to be the majority of readers of M/M erotic romance).

Despite these flaws, my publisher liked the book and it was released a couple years ago. So, after making those mistakes, what did I do? I did it all over again, of course. Silent Hearts came out a year later -- it focussed a bit more on the romance than Autumn Fire, but the main protagonist was still too promiscuous and the sex acts still weren't that appealing to female readers.

Silent Hearts was also published by my publisher.

Autumn Fire and Silent Hearts continue to sell well and have decent ratings, but I never really did grab on to the M/M readership.

After all that, I finally learned my lesson. I'm naturally more of an erotica writer than an erotic romance writer. I launched into a number of short stories to flesh out my erotica voice and have really developed that aspect of my writing. I find romance still enters my stories, though. They are not "romance stories," but rather "erotica stories with a bit of romance."  I've finally found my niche in the marketplace.

Though my dad and I disagree on a number of things, there is one maxim he often repeats that I think is generally good advice. "There are no mistakes. You made the best decision at the time with the information you had."

Writing Autumn Fire and Silent Hearts were not mistakes. In hindsight, some of my approach was a "mistake," but I'd much rather look at it as a learning experience. If I didn't embark on those projects, I would never have learned all I now know about the industry. As well, writing smut has hugely increased my skill level for writing in general.

While continuing on with my smut, I have recently returned to my first love of science fiction and have completed the first draft of what I hope will be an epic series. Even in my first draft, my novel is magnitudes better than anything I wrote before exploring smut. I have learned so much these past few years about publishing, writing, and editing that I would never had learned if I hadn't made these "mistakes."

There are no mistakes, there are only learning opportunities.



Cameron D. James is a writer of gay erotica and M/M erotic romance; his latest release is Go-Go Boys of Club 21: The Complete Series. He lives in Canada, is always crushing on Starbucks baristas, and has two rescue cats. To learn more about Cameron, visit http://www.camerondjames.com.

Forever – is composed of Nows

Sacchi Green

Forever – is composed of Nows –
‘Tis not a different time –
Except for Infiniteness –
And Latitude of Home –

Emily Dickinson is, as always, right. Each moment of Now is a component of Forever. Forever is built of Nows, each affecting the next, each happening in just one of all the potential ways. In cases of things like chemical reactions resulting in explosions or physical effects of gravity there may not actually be much in the way of alternatives on a moment to moment basis, but in the case of humans, we tend to think that choices come into play, however conscious or subconscious they may be. I’m inclined to broaden the concept and assume that all living things make choices, however random. In another mood I might argue that even the choices of living things are determined by chemistry and physics on levels we may never understand, but in general I figure that we might as well believe in free will, because we have to behave as though it exists in order to function at all.

So, onward to the choices we make, the major ones, involving clear alternatives, metaphorical “forks in the road.” More precisely, however much I’ve been procrastinating, the choices that I’ve made. Anybody who’s lived as long as I have must have made a whole lot of crucial, life-changing choices, right?

Right, but…as I look back, trying to remember, it’s hard to find times when there really seemed to be a choice. In petty, everyday ways, noodling around on Facebook, etc. instead of doing anything constructive like writing, sure. I make bad choices like that many times a day. But at the the times in the past when a different choice might have made for a better outcome, it wasn’t clear, and often didn’t even seem possible. I came to dread choices when it came to dealing with the difficulties of my younger son (who has since, many years later, been diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome and a few extras) because I was being pressured on many sides but no options seemed right or even possible.

Those Nows are Thens, though, all components of Forever, but no longer requiring decisions in the same way. What’s done, or not done, is, well, done. Lately, when I’ve been spending time in places that have long been familiar—the home where I grew up, the college I went to, the place I love to retreat to in the mountains of NH, the house I’ve lived in now for almost forty years—I’ve been imagining that I see ghosts of myself at different ages, and remembering how life felt when the future seemed more extensive than the past. I envy those ghosts, just a bit, but I don’t second-guess their choices, and don’t think of times when I wish they’d done things differently, except on the few occasions when I might have been kinder or more helpful. There’s always the regret that I didn’t get started writing much sooner than I did, but that doesn’t feel as much like a wrong choice as just the way things worked out.

When it comes to forks in the road, I’d rather think about roads taken than those unexplored. I’ve just come back from a short trip to Cape Cod, where I’m always reminded that my parents got engaged on Nauset Beach, at the beginning of WWII. They knew that my father would soon be drafted into military service, and knew that it might be wiser to wait until after the war, but the British movie Mrs. Miniver tipped the scales and persuaded them (and many other couples, I’m sure) to go for all the joy they could, while they could. Without that choice, I would not exist. I’ve always been grateful to Mrs. Miniver and Nauset Beach.

I don’t like to speculate on what would have happened if my parents had made a different choice, but I do feel a certain fascination with choices made under the pressure of dramatic events like WWII. Which leads, wouldn’t you know, to excerpts from a story, or rather a couple of stories, that I’ve mentioned here before all too often. That’s the way it goes with fascination. In the first story an American army nurse stationed in England and an American pilot ferrying war planes for the RAF have a brief, intense fling, and then have to part, the nurse being transferred to the Pacific and the pilot returning to the US to fly with the women’s air corps there who have been promised official military status soon (a promise that isn’t kept.) The pilot can’t afford the scandal of a lesbian relationship, but she wavers in her intention.
____

     I thought, when I could think anything again, that she had fallen asleep, she was so still. Gently, gently I touched my lips to the nearly-healed tattoo above her breast. Tiny wings matching mine. Something to remember her by.
     Without opening her eyes she said, in a lost, small voice, "What are we going to do, Kay?"
     I knew what she was going to do. "You're going to claim the sky, to make history. And anyway," I said, falling back on dark humor since I had no comfort to offer, "a cozy menage in Paris seems out of the question with the Nazis in control." 
     Then, because I knew if I touched her again we would both cry, and hate ourselves for it, I stood, put my clothes in as much order as I could, and walked away.
_____

Thirty-five years later they meet again, in Alaska. Kay has married a soldier whose life she saved in the Pacific war, raised a family, become a physical therapist, and recently discovered how to contact Cleo, the pilot. Cleo has made a career in flying and has a partner, Yelena, who had flown bombers in Russia during the war, one of what the Germans called “Night Witches.” Later, after her husband and child had died as the result of a Siberian earthquake that Stalin refused to acknowledge with medical help, she defected to the US, crashed on an Alaskan ice shelf, and was rescued by Cleo. Yelena is wise, and big-hearted, and welcoming, and understands that she and Kay are, in a sense, living each other’s alternate lives. Near the end, she urges them to spend some time alone together.
_____

At last we lay peacefully, cocooned in blankets, Cleo's head on my breast, my mind drifting. Surely we had been like this always, through the lingering violet twilight of summer, and the long, white nights of winter.
"Kay," she said suddenly, "I did try to find you. But it was too late."
"Yes," I said, stroking her vibrant silver hair. "And if it hadn't been too late..." What of Jack, I thought, and my children? But all I said was, "Yelena would have been alone on the ice."
"Yes," Cleo said. We clung together a little longer, in perfect understanding of how much, after all, we had.
_____

Now, when I think in terms of “what-would-have-happened-if,” I think of it as a “Yelena on the ice” situation—which is also, incidentally, a story I intend to write one of these days. Or years.

Enough of speculation on forks in the road. Today, and often lately, I’ve been concentrating on the Nows of these lovely autumn days. I’ve stood in the yellow (and orange and scarlet and green) woods of Robert Frost’s poem The Road Not Taken and not worried about which of two diverging paths to take, but just absorbed the beauty, the glory, the infinite gift of being there, in the moment, in the Now.

Through Whose Eyes?

By Lisabet Sarai

When the police colonel walked into my bar, I knew it was a bad sign. I was pretty sure that I was up-to-date on protection money. I knew the documents proving that all my girls were over eighteen were stowed in my safe, and I'd done a drug check only yesterday, but I couldn't help worrying.

Police Colonel Apichat wasn't a bad sort. He was always polite, both to me and to my girls, when he came by to pick up the monthly envelope of cash. Occasionally, he'd even accept my offer of a drink. He'd sit at the bar, nursing a Chang beer, hungry eyes surveying the dancers as though he wanted to devour them.

I'd send over two of my prettiest employees to try and cheer him up, but with all their teasing and flirting, he rarely smiled.

That night, though, he looked even more serious than usual. And he was not alone. Behind his wiry, dark-skinned frame I saw the crewcut bulk of his lieutenant, Narongchai. The girls called him Kwai, buffalo, though he reminded me more of a gorilla.

I hurried over to Apichat, and gave him respectful wai. "Colonel, this in an unexpected pleasure. Please come inside. Can I offer you and your companion a drink?"

"Thank you, Madame," he said in English. He always speaks English to me, even though he knows that I'm fluent in Thai. "We are on duty. In any case, we come to tell you the terrible news."

Terrible news? Was the government on another morality and social order campaign?

~ Bangkok Noir. First person, past tense

Three years since I last saw him, and now his plane is late. I perch on the edge of the chair across from the American Airlines desk where he told me to meet him, tension winding me tighter with every moment.

It’s always like this. My chest aches. It’s difficult to breathe. My nipples are as taut and swollen as if he already had them wrapped in elastic bands. I try not to be distracted by the stickiness between my bare thighs. I glance at the arrivals screen. His flight has just landed. Ten minutes, fifteen at most, before I can expect him. I fill my lungs deliberately and try to slow my racing pulse.

I hover between joy and terror. It has been so long, too long. What will he think of me, the strands of gray in my hair, the new wrinkles? What will he ask of me? Will I be able to give him what he needs? I remember other reunions, too few, too short. No time for more than a few kisses, a few playful swats on my bared butt. I remember lying on his lap in Golden Gate Park, my skirt flipped up around my waist. I can precisely recreate my shame and my excitement. I recall slouching down in the front seat of his car in a dark, sweltering parking garage, while he unbuttoned my blouse and dabbled his fingers in my cunt, naming me as his slut. A few hours every few years is all we manage, a country and my marriage separating us even as our history and our fantasies draws us together.

~ Reunion. First person, present tense

She's glad to be his slave. She's just not too crazy about being his housekeeper and maid, at least not these days.

When they first moved in together, he used to make her strip before she vacuumed the carpets or washed the floors. He'd watch her, sitting in the wing-backed chair that they bought together at the garage sale, as she strutted around in her collar and high heels, pushing the mop in front of her.

"Arch your back," he'd order. "Stick out your butt."

She'd struggle to keep her balance as she obeyed, her pussy liquefying as it always did at the sound of his voice. She could feel his eyes on her buttocks like a physical caress. He wouldn't miss the signs, the flush on her face, the taut nipples, the musky scent that wafted through the apartment. When he was paying attention, his powers of observation were astounding. Not to mention his powers of seduction.

~ Domestic Goddess. Third person, limited, present tense.

Kit couldn't concentrate. She tried to force her mind back to the list of enzymatic cofactors scrolling by on her screen, but her thoughts kept evading the task, slipping away to her damned annoying neighbor. Well, not to him, exactly, but to his hands and his tongue and the things he did with them.

She closed her eyes, rubbing her temples against the first twinges of a headache. She saw kaleidoscopic lights, smelled cinnamon, cannabis and male sweat. She felt the soft fur of his beard brushing over her bare pubis. A bolt of electricity shot through her, leaving her damp and breathless in its wake. Damn, damn, damn.

"Kit? Kit!" Jill was shaking her. Kit blinked stupidly at her friend. "Where were you, girl?"

"Oh, um, I was just working on the bilateral polymerization reaction. Trying to visualize how the radicals would align. What's up?"

"Lunch time. Want to come with me to the caf for a quick bite?"

"Um, I don't think so. Thought I'd go home for lunch. I left some notes there, and it's such a beautiful day. I could do with a walk." Kit couldn't meet Jill's eyes. There were no notes.

~ Chemistry. Third person, limited, past tense.

Once upon a time, in an old port city north of the capital where the clippers used to flit in and out of the bay like giant butterflies, there were three witches. Well, only two of them knew they were witches, at least at the start of the story.

Marguerite, who counted Portuguese traders and African shamans among her ancestors, sported a frenzy of lustrous black hair and was partial to silk. She had inherited a rambling clapboard house that perched on the hill overlooking Western Harbor, which she had filled with ancient Chinese porcelain, Colonial silver, Hindu carvings of entwined gods, and bright tribal hangings woven from alpaca wool or mulberry bark. She had no regular employment. Once or twice a year, she’d invite the public into her museum-like abode, to sell a few artifacts with which she’d became bored and scout out people who might be worth collecting.

Beryl hailed from generations of Boston Irish, as one might guess from her fiery curls and milk-white, freckle-dusted complexion. She ran an antiquarian bookstore on Main Street, on one of the few blocks that had not yet succumbed to chain drugstores and tacky souvenir shops, and lived in a bungalow at the end of one of the Neck’s tiny lanes. With her tie-dyed dresses, dangling earrings and hand-made sandals, she fit perfectly into the artists’ colony. Her talents, however, lay in realms other than painting and sculpture.

Over their years together, Marguerite and Beryl had been responsible for much unexpected good fortune and not a little mischief. The townspeople didn’t realize how much of the city’s special qualities – the invigorating crispness of the breeze, on even the hottest days – the crystalline sparkle of sunlight on the waves – the welcoming sense of history that pervaded the narrow streets – was the work of their resident witches. However, duality limited the women’s power. They were well aware that they needed a third to complete their circle and perfect their occult abilities. However, you can’t simply conjure a witch into existence. You must wait for her to appear on her own.

~ The Witches of Gloucester (WIP). Third person omniscient, past tense.

"Which would you prefer, Sarah, the cane or the feather duster?"

"Is that a trick question?"

"Why do you ask? Don't you trust me?"

"Of course I do. But you do have a way of twisting things around in unexpected directions."

"I thought you liked surprises. In any case, as your Master it's my responsibility to add a certain - ambiguity - to our interactions. To keep you on your toes."

"These ridiculous spike heels do that well enough."

"If I hear any more complaints or excuses, Sarah, I will make you very sorry. And I don't mean something you'd enjoy like a spanking or nipple clamps."

"I..."

"Sarah! Just answer my question. Now."

"Well... I choose the cane."

"Really? Why is that? You're blushing, you know. Tell me why you prefer the cane."

"Well - um - I think it will hurt more. And that it will please you more, to see me enduring that pain."

"But I asked what you wanted. Not what you think I'd want."

~ Trick or Treat. Third person omniscient? Present tense.

Close your eyes. Let your breathing slow and deepen. Feel the blood waking your bare skin. The moonlight teases, silvery silk against your eyelids. Don't give in. The dark is what you need, not the moon's caress.

Can you feel my breath, warm against your neck? Or is it only the autumn breeze drifting in your window? You sense my presence, but you are as always a skeptic. My lips hover above the pulse at your throat. You could swear you feel the heat, the vibration, the waves my fingers stir in the air as I trail them down the length of you.

~ Offering. Second person, present tense.

We make our choices, often blindly. Then we live with the consequences.

It's your fiftieth birthday, I'm half a world away, and married to someone else. I honestly don't know which is the bigger obstacle. No, scratch that. If today's experiment is successful, the distance will mean nothing.

I want to help you celebrate. To give you something special. Romantic and cynic that you are, I want to prove to you my enduring devotion, across time and space. I want to give back to you some of the magic you've shared with me.

~Limbo. Second person?? present tense.

For the next two weeks here at the Grip, we’ll be talking about perspective and point of view. As illustrated by the snippets above, I’ve experimented with a variety of different perspectives. Although strictly speaking, tense is not a part of the POV question, I tend to consider the two elements together because they interact. Together they combine to produce different feelings or voices. Suppose, for instance, that I’d decided to write my short story “Chemistry” in the present tense:

Kit can't concentrate. She tries to force her mind back to the list of enzymatic cofactors scrolling by on her screen, but her thoughts keep evading the task, slipping away to her damned annoying neighbor. Well, not to him, exactly, but to his hands and his tongue and the things he did with them.

She closes her eyes, rubbing her temples against the first twinges of a headache. She sees kaleidoscopic lights, smells cinnamon, cannabis and male sweat. She feels the soft fur of his beard brushing over her bare pubis. A bolt of electricity shoots through her, leaving her damp and breathless in its wake. Damn, damn, damn.

To me, these paragraphs feel more immediate, more driven by emotion and sensation, than the original. When you write in the present, even adopting a third person POV, you tend to pull your reader more into the action.

Switch to the first person and the sensations really jump out at you. You’re there with the narrator, feeling every sensation.

I can't concentrate. I try to force my mind back to the list of enzymatic cofactors scrolling by on my screen, but my thoughts keep evading the task, slipping away to my damned annoying neighbor. Well, not to him, exactly, but to his hands and his tongue and the things he did with them.

I close my eyes, rubbing my temples against the first twinges of a headache. I see kaleidoscopic lights, smell cinnamon, cannabis and male sweat. I feels the soft fur of his beard brushing over my bare pubis. A bolt of electricity shoots through me, leaving me damp and breathless in its wake. Damn, damn, damn.

So why didn’t I use the first person, present tense for this story in the first place? For one thing, the it didn’t fit with my character, Kit. She’s a workaholic, used to denying or ignoring her physical and emotional needs. The distancing effects of the third person past made it possible for me to reveal truths to her and to the reader simultaneously. I find that when my characters conscious and unconscious lives diverge, I often choose third person.

On the other hand, most of the time I actually don’t make a choice at all. A particular story “wants” to be written from a specific POV and in a specific tense. I have a sense of the sort of feeling that should accompany the story, its tone, before I write the first paragraph, and I begin to write in the POV and tense that best captures that feeling.

Occasionally, when I’m having trouble with a story, I will realize that the POV is the problem and I’ll switch from first to third, or vice versa. At least 90% of the time, though, I stick with what feels right at the start.

I find that the first person works particularly well for erotica, because of its intensity and immediacy. And despite its technical difficulties, I’m very partial to first person present. Two of my novels (Exposure and Nasty Business, both, alas, currently out of print) use that combination of POV and tense. In fact, Nasty Business alternates among three narrators, all speaking in the first person present,

What do I mean by technical difficulties? When you’re writing present tense, it’s hard to deal with time gaps. This may not be a serious issue for short stories, which often unfold over a period of hours, but most novels cover a longer span. In a first person present narration, you and the reader are inside the character’s head, watching events together as they occur. On the other hand, not every event is relevant to the plot. If you were to describe every moment of the character’s day - brushing her teeth, doing her laundry, walking to the bus stop, riding the bus, climbing the stairs to her office – the book would be incredibly boring. So somehow you need to skip over unnecessary details, without requiring that the character spend too much time unconscious! This is a definite challenge.

Still, I do love that combination. Probably 70% of my erotic work is first person present. In fact, sometimes I deliberately seek out stories to tell using other POVs and tenses, just to introduce some diversity into my literary voice. The witches story above is a good example. I’m putting together a lesbian collection and I thought I needed something very different from my other stories.

Of course, markets sometimes influence the choice of POV. When I first started writing erotic romance, my publisher frowned on using first person. Being a good sub and wanting to please, I adapted. The years seem to have somewhat eroded this prejudice against first person, however. I’ve read first person romance by a number of authors, and gone back to writing it occasionally myself. On the other hand, there’s a genre convention for alternating perspectives between different characters, at least in longer romance works. As noted above, this is easier to do in third person.

Some editors really hate first person. And don’t try to sell a story written in the second person! I’m not sure why, but many erotica editors will toss out a second person story without even reading it. I suspect that this reaction derives from the fact that so many amateur erotic fantasies are written in this mode.

You enter the room where you’ve shackled me to the wall, almost noiseless in your bare feet, but I know you’re there. The blindfold ensures that I can’t see you, but I smell your sweat and that evergreen cologne that drives me crazy. As you rummage in the toy box, I try to identify the implements you’re extracting by their sound.

I’ve heard many complaints about this style. “Why is the author telling ‘you’ what is going on, when the ‘you’ already knows?” I can see the point, but in some situations, the technique can be effective. For one thing, it emphasizes the separation between “I” and “you”.

Of course, this is not exactly second person POV. Similarly, my story “Limbo”, excerpted above, is mostly first person present, but the other main character is referred to as “you” rather than “he”. A true second person tale would not include any “I”. In fact, I’m not sure what that would look like. I doubt that second person would be sustainable over a long work. However, I could be wrong.

And what about the third person “omnisicent” point of view? This was common a hundred years ago, but rarer now. How does this differ from alternating third person limited? I guess the distinction is based on what is revealed. In an omniscient POV, the author possesses and shares information not available to the characters.

I could say more, but I’ve already run on longer than I intended, so I’ll shut up. I will leave further explorations to my august fellow contributors.

However you look at it, though, this is an important craft issue. Through whose eyes will your story be seen? Change the answer and you fundamentally change the story.

Taking Steps

By Lisabet Sarai

God give me the serenity

To accept the things I cannot change,

The courage

To change the things I can,

And the wisdom to know the difference.

I haven't been to a Twelve Step meeting in decades, but the simple prayer above is still a tool I use regularly in dealing with my life. It captures a great deal of wisdom in just a single sentence, suggesting a strategy for overcoming frustration, worry and despair.

The crux of that technique? Maybe some people focus on the acceptance aspect, the notion that fighting against something that's inevitable and immutable simply wastes precious emotional energy without solving any problems. I definitely believe that's true. I resonate strongly with the Buddhist notion that attachment is the source of suffering.

For me, however, the most important function of the so-called Serenity Prayer is to remind me that I have the power to choose, to change aspects of my existence that don't seem to be working well. When I'm unhappy, I've learned to examine the situation in order to determine whether I in fact have any control over the ostensible causes.

Over the past six months, I've been feeling that Oh Get a Grip was floundering. We've had last minute topics, missed posts, Saturdays without guests. Even more distressing was the fact that I wasn't enjoying the process of blogging much anymore. I viewed my Sunday post as one more task I had to get done, a not-necessarily-pleasant responsibility with an inconvenient deadline. That attitude has probably been reflected in the quality of my posts, too (although I'd like to believe that isn't true).

I was aware of my negative emotions swirling around the Grip, but for quite a while I felt powerless to do much about them. I didn't want to shut the blog down – I know we have loyal readers, and anyway I personally love reading the contributions of my fellow blog members. And yet I felt as though I couldn't honestly keep doing it, week after week after week. The blog was draining me, stealing time from my writing, making me feel guilty... I felt trapped.

When I raised the issue with the other blog members, I discovered they had similar feelings – both positive and negative. Together we realized that we didn't have to accept things the way they were, that we could engineer changes to the blog schedule and content without throwing in the towel completely.

So starting this week, you'll see several changes here at Oh Get a Grip. Instead of having daily posts, we'll offer new content three times weekly, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. And each of us will post on alternate weeks. We'll still moot topics to stimulate our creativity and encourage dialogue, but each topic will span two weeks, so every Gripper will have the opportunity to weigh in. We've also modified our procedures for choosing topics, so everyone will know the subject under discussion well in advance - but that's an internal issue. Finally, we won't have regular Saturday guests anymore. However, since we'll have Tuesdays and Thursdays free, we're very open if any other authors want to come and play with us on a temporary basis. (If you'd like to be a guest blogger at the Grip, just email me at the address you'll find here: http://www.lisabetsarai.com/links.html.)

We hope that our loyal readers feel as positively about these changes as we do. I'm excited by the prospect of having more time to think about my posts and to pen essays or fiction snippets that really sparkle. And I'm proud that we have had the courage to take the steps necessary to keep the Grip alive and growing – as opposed to just giving up.