But I’m getting sidetracked here.  Where does the dock go in winter?  Some docks are taken out of the water and stored until spring.  Others are left in the water with skimmers added.  Skimmers are little fans that are submerged at the end of the dock to keep the water in the immediate area moving and prevent a freeze-up, which would be bad.  If ice sets in around the legs of the dock, it’ll crush the wood as it tightens and shifts.  Hence, skimmers to keep ice from forming around those legs.

Then you have our dock.  As you see from the photo above, it becomes a skeleton in winter.  The planks that we walk on are removed and stored in the garage, sheltered from the elements, and the framework is hoisted up by thick wires anchored on the trees.  Come May, the framework will be lowered again and the planks fit back in, much like a jigsaw puzzle.

Drive around the lake, and you see these skeletal docks all over.  At first sight, they’re eerie.  Then they simply become part of the winterscape, which, as I said above, is bleak this year.  A thick cover of snow would solve the problem.  But I like not having snow to mess up driving and ice to threaten walking.  So, can we order snow in our backyard and nowhere else?  That’d be neat.

This particular lake weekend was a working one for me.  I reread all of SWEET SALT AIR – again – but no number of times is too many.  I also started my shrug, added a block or two to my sock yarn blanket, and (with DH) watched Breaking Dawn, Part 1.  I’ve already seen it twice.  But no number of times is too many for that, either.

By the way, if you want to read more about the lake in winter, try AN ACCIDENTAL WOMAN.  Its sister book, LAKE NEWS, takes place in fall.  Have you read either?

I’m a sock addict.  But socks take a long time to make and, often, great concentration.  So I was in the mood for something different when I visited my LYS, Iron Horse, yesterday.  Actually, I was in the mood to knit a shrug.  I don’t love making sweaters – they take a lot of time and rarely fit me right.  But a shrug is only half a sweater.  I figured I could use worsted weight yarn and finish it pretty fast.  I had downloaded several patterns from Ravelry and took them to the store – and we did pick out fabulous yarn, Debbie Smith (owner of Iron Horse) and I.  Naturally, the color I loved wasn’t worsted weight but a slightly lighter DK weight, but that was no problem.  Debbie easily converted my chosen pattern to this.  She’s great that way.

But then I spotted a moebius scarf on display.  A moebius, by the way, is a one piece ring of knitting that twists, adding interest to a piece.  Debbie took the sample off the wall, so I could see it close up.  I picked out yarn, Pagewood Farm’s Swagger (the shade is Fabulous Fall), and added a pair of ChiaoGoo size 17 (yikes!) 24″ circulars.  Debbie wrote out the pattern (easy easy easy) and wound the yarn.  Then (treat of all treats) I took off my coat and started the scarf there and then, so that she could show me how to make the twist.  I can’t believe how easy it was.  I mean, how many times have I cast on to knit in the round and had to take care not to twist at the join?  How many times have I mistakenly done it?  This time, there was nothing mistaken about it.  Deliberate and simple – a twist done once and c’est ça.

Those are my Valentines Day flowers, by the way.  And I did buy the soft dove gray wool for the shrug (photo below).  I’ll start it this weekend. Because the moebius is fast.  What you see above is half, which I did last night.  I should finish tonight.  Instant gratification?  For a knitter, that’s as close as you get.

The sweater – oversized in that it fell to my thighs, but not thick – was my clothing.  Beneath it, I wore thin leggings and an even thinner layering tee shirt.  I would never, ever leave my house in the leggings and tee shirt alone.

But when the guard asked, I took off the sweater.  Embarrassed, I held my arms up in that scanner, then walked out, then waited, assuming that was the end of it.  It wasn’t.  The guard on that end pointed to the (very public) image of me with a square at the side of the breast.  She didn’t verbally ask what it was.  Nor did she use her eyes and look, though you could see everything that was NOT there through my white, skin-tight layering tee.  Nope.  She patted my breast.

What that scanner picked up was the implant that has been in my body since reconstruction after breast cancer sixteen years ago.  I told her that (with some disdain).  She was satisfied and let me go.  But I’m still steaming.  And asking questions.

Like, where’s the common sense in these security screenings?

Like, why was my husband allowed through the scanner with his heavier crew neck sweater, which he wore over a dense, oxford cloth,  button-down shirt?

Like, why was that screen with the results of the scan right there where everyone else could see?

Like, are women discriminated against by male security guards?

Like, do I look like a terrorist?

I’m all for safe flying.  But this was overkill.  What are your thoughts here?  Have you been embarrassed going through security?  Know someone who has?  Are women more susceptible to quasi-strips than men?

Well, okay.  My knitting needles did get through without question.  I’m working on a pair of fingerless mitts in a cheery yellow, doing two at a time on one 40″ circular using magic loop.  So at least I had something to soothe me as I sat on that plane and seethed.

You wouldn’t ask any of it if you’d seen me this week.  I’ve been writing three consecutive scenes in Sweet Salt Air, each pivotal to the plot, each filled with high emotion, and I’ve been wringing my hands, pacing the floor, writing with my heart in my mouth, waking at night with my characters’ worries.  We’re talking betrayal, heartache, and fear.  You may read it in passing, but I live with it.

Okay.  Maybe the Patriots’ loss got me started in a state.

But what my characters lived through this week really did take my mind off that.  Writing emotion is a matter of total immersion.  I haven’t been able to do any other reading this week (not that I wanted to read the sports pages anyway.)

Does the writing flow faster during these scenes?  Yes and no.  The words pour out and fill the page – but I change them more.  Have you ever had an argument with someone and wanted to take back what you said or say it in a different way?  In an ideal world, you can.  Writing is that world.  I can fine-tune those emotional scenes until they’re just right.

So I write in a burst, stop and feel, edit in a burst, stop, feel, and write more.  I take a thirty-minute car ride, feel what’s coming next, and speak dialogue into my microrecorder.  If a character puts a hand on her chest because her heart is beating that hard, my hand is on my own chest.  If her throat is tight, mine is too.  And hey, if the guy in a love scene doesn’t turn me on, I can’t write the scene.

So the short, sweet, intimate answer?  I feel everything.

What about you?  Do you feel those emotions?  Does your heart pound?  Does your jaw drop?  Do you put your hand on the top of your head in utter disbelief, as Charlotte Evans just did?

I’m a workaholic, but you may have already guessed that.  How else could I have written so many books?  I wish I could say that writing is like breathing to me – that I need to write to live.  But the truth is, I came to writing when I was in my mid-thirties, prior to which I’d been living and breathing just fine.  I wrote my first book because it was challenging and fun.  I continue to write because I enjoy it, because you guys enjoy it, and also (bluntly) because I have a contract and a deadline.  The most basic reason, though?  I write to keep busy.  When I’m busy, I don’t worry about things I can’t control.   When I’m busy, I don’t have time to tell my kids how to raise their kids.  When I’m busy, I shop less, stress less, overeat less.

I know exactly when this started.  When I was a teenager and learned (eight years after the fact) that my mother had died of breast cancer, I started to worry that I’d get it and die, myself.  Keeping busy was the one way I could keep the worry at bay.  It was all about distraction.

To that end, I’ve always been one to dream up extra work.  When I was in high school, I loaded on the extra-curriculars not for the sake of a resume but for me.  Same thing when I was in college.  Senior year, when I should have been slacking off, I decided to make my own wedding dress.  It was a major time-killer.

Once I was married and had kids, I didn’t have to go looking for action.  I was busy without trying – so busy that I didn’t have time to shuttle my kids to extra activities every day after school.  Then I realized that it had less to do with my time and more with what I wanted for my kids.  All around, I saw parents who programmed their kids from dawn to dusk.  But moderation was important, I believed.  My kids had Little League and religious school, and when they got into high school, they got involved in extra-curriculars all on their own.  But I never wanted them over-programmed.  Playing with neighborhood kids was important.  Same with talking with my husband and me and even, occasionally, vegging for a few minutes in front of the tv.

Yes, I believed in downtime for my kids.  I just never quite managed to swing it for myself.  Until now.  But it’s still an intellectual thing.  I have to tell myself that my writing will be better if I take time to reread what I’ve written, to think about what comes next, to let those creative juices mix and simmer.  I have to tell myself that the earth will still turn if the laundry waits another day.  I have to tell myself that I’ll be a better person for taking a breather once in a while.

I’ve never liked doing only one thing at a time – case in point being knitting through the evening news.  And I suppose that’s still fine as long as the knitting project is a no-brainer like my sock yarn blanket.  That said, my rationale was wrong.  I knit through the news to justify my sitting on my butt in front of the tv for those 30 minutes.

Multi-tasking means you accomplish more, but it has its limits.  Life whips past fast enough.  If we don’t slow things down, we miss the pleasure in those little moments.

Like watching ducks swimming around the unfrozen edges of the lake.  Like sleeping for an hour in front of the fire.  Like walking down an icy road breathing deeply of the cold air.

Such was last weekend.  The best part was that I didn’t come home feeling like I’d wasted my time.  My head was clear and my energy restored.  Doing nothing is definitely worthwhile.  At least, once in a while it is.

I’m back knitting with Brian Williams now.  And that’s okay, too.  I’m not doing it to justify tv time, but simply, at the end of a long writing day, for the pleasure of it.

So, did I do right with my kids?   They turned out great, still I wonder.  Do you think kids are too programmed today?  Or not enough?

I don’t know why I changed my mind.  It might have been the opening pages, which were gripping.  Or the fact that I hadn’t read last month’s book and felt a responsibility to the other members to be there with something intelligent to say.  Or even the fact that the Patriots were playing Sunday, and, being a nervous wreck, I needed a reminder that war is real, while a game is a game.

I loaded the book on my iPad last Thursday and read it, start to finish, over the weekend, but come Monday night, I was still asking myself why our group had picked this book.  Then we started talking.

The main character intrigued us.  Some of us believed every word he said, some wondered if he might have embellished a bit.

The war details horrified us, but discussing them with others, each of whom was haunted by a different scene, was cathartic.

We had relatives in this war.  Talking about them – and about how little they wanted to talk about it and when, in manic bursts, they did – was fascinating.

Three elements – an intriguing protagonist, something to learn, emotions with which to personally relate – made the night.  But you don’t have to be in a book group to appreciate these.  My books are as different from “Unbroken” as night from day, yet I try to put these three elements in each.

Speaking of which, I discussed Escape last week with a library book group.  One of the questions?  Is it true that Jude was dead in the first draft of this book?  Yes, it is true.  My publisher made me bring him back.  Were they right?  What do you think?

BTW, my Shoemaker’s Hat is sitting downstairs, waiting for me to weave in the ends (I warned you), at which point I’ll photograph it for you to see.  In the meanwhile, I’ve added more squares to my sock yarn blanket.  And I’ve started another pair of socks.  This one’s a Wendy Johnson toe-up pattern called Ribbed Ribbons, and I was determined to learn Wendy’s favorite cast-on for toe-ups, something called Judy’s Magic Cast-on.  I had to do it three times, and that was on the first sock.  It did it two times on the second sock (Note: I work both socks simultaneously, the toe of one, then the toe of the second, the foot of one, then the foot of the second, etc.).  Not pleased with the way the cast-on looked, I ripped out both socks yet again and repeated the cast-on until it was right.  More on that in another blog.  I think I’ll call that one Tinking, Which Is What Knitters Do When They Mess It Up.

Type my name into Amazon, then sort by publication date, and you’ll find books of mine that you’ve never heard of.  Take First, Best and Only.  Originally published in 1986, a first-ever hardcover edition is coming in March.  I didn’t know this until I checked the Amazon list myself, which is often the only way I can find out when my early books are being reissued.  Once I sell pub rights to a publisher (as I did First, Best and Only to Harlequin), they don’t have to ask my permission.  They don’t even have to let me know.

Is this sad, or what?  I mean, these books are my children.  At the time I wrote it, I poured my heart and soul into each.  To be so out of contact with them now is troublesome.  It is also, quite honestly, short-sighted of the publisher.  I have a website, a blog, and an active Facebook page.  I can let my readers know about these books, which is good for sales, right?

That said, there was a time when I wanted to keep my old books under wraps.  My newer ones are very different – longer, cleaner in style, and focused on an issue that has as much to do with family relationships as romantic love.  In the last decade, I wanted readers to think of me more broadly as a writer of fiction, rather than a writer of romance.  When old books pop up out of the blue, they confuse newer readers, who expect one thing and get another.

More oldies are coming, though, and now I’m totally on board.  Sixteen of my very first books, all of which have been out of print for more than a dozen years, are being reissued as ebooks in 2012 and 2013.  The first four – The Forever Instinct, Jasmine Sorcery, First Things First, and Straight From the Heart – will be published in May.  There will also be several two-in-one print editions, the first of which, titled Warm Hearts and containing Heat Wave and A Special Something, is being published in September.

Why am I on board?  I reread the above books over the holidays, and loved them!  Yes, there are vintage moments, like the music-loving heroine buying a record (no CDs, DVDs, or MP3 players) and the hero of another going straight through an airport to the gate (no security).  But my writing style is intact, and these books are rich with feeling.  They’re easy reads, they’re sexy, and they’re fun.

Still prefer the newer, longer books?  Here’s a tip.  When you find a book of mine that you didn’t know was coming, always, always check the copyright date.  These old books are good – I do love each and every one, just like I love my kids – but they’re different.

Good but different.  Isn’t that the way of people everywhere?

I came to this understanding through trial and error, so if you’re just starting to write, take heed.  At the beginning, it was about who touched what when, and what the touchee touched in return.  The first time I typed the word “nipple,” I thought the paper would go up in flames.  In time, my typewriter gave way to a computer, and the novelty of writing body parts faded.  I wanted those scenes to be meaningful, and to be meaningful, they had to be couched in emotion.  The strongest emotion?  Love.  It may be nascent; the characters may not yet put a word to what they feel.  But it’s there.

It’s been years since I’ve written a sex scene that doesn’t involve love.  That’s the nature of my books.  Gratuitous sex doesn’t do it for me – not as a writer, a reader, or a woman.

So how do I approach a sex scene?  First, I decide what the characters are feeling at that particular point.  Curiosity, fear, compassion, confusion, love – I write down the words.  Then I pick a setting that works both with the plot and the nature of the moment.  If, for instance, a relationship is tentative and new, I’m not sure I’d have them do it behind a cabana surrounded by raucous laughter from party-goers at the pool.  In my mind, tentative and new demands a gentler setting.  That said, the first sex in Escape took place on a forest floor.  Born of fear, relief, anger and love between a newly-reunited husband and wife, it was sudden and strong, and it worked.

Words, body parts, motions — all have to fit the emotional mix.  How blunt to be?  That depends on your audience.  Mine doesn’t like heavy graphics, so I don’t dwell on hardness, wetness, or thrusts the way I might have twenty years ago.  That said, feebleness doesn’t work for me.  My characters feel passion, and if that occasionally translates into fast and rough against a wall, that’s okay, as long as (a) there’s a reason for it in the plot, and (b) it’s mutual.

Just as every scene in a novel has to advance the plot in some way, so does every sex scene.  There has to be a purpose for it, ideally in furthering the relationship between the characters.

I just wrote the first sex in Sweet Salt Air.  What are the characters feeling?  Mostly, they are taken by surprise.  Neither is looking for sex.  Neither wants to feel attracted to the other.  Neither is conscious of the slow build until it hits.  Their lovemaking is startling, forbidden but sweet, which is exactly what they are feeling at that moment.

There you have it.  Write a sex scene from the heart, and it’ll leave you wanting more.  How’s that for a closing line?

P.S. I don’t post gratuitous photos, either.  There’s reason for this one.  A moonlit beach?  The rhythm of the tide?  No one around?  Think Sweet Salt Air and dream.

How do knitters get to this state?  We fall in love with a skein of yarn, though we already have multiple projects on needles at home.  We buy more yarn, even when we know there’s no way in hell we’ll ever live long enough to go through the yarn we already have, much less use this new skein.  But we can’t live without it.  Sometimes it’s the color that does it.  Sometimes it’s the content.  Blend a little cashmere with fine merino wool, and I’m a goner.

But.  There are times.  When we do use yarn from our stash.

I had such a time this week when the new Knitters’ Review arrived.  This is a great little online newsletter, by the way, and it’s free, if any of you knitters want to subscribe.  In the 1/5 issue, Clara Parkes, its creator and a renowned knitter, told of finding herself over the holidays in the biting winds of downtown Portland (ME) without a hat.  To save others from the same fate, she went home and designed a quick-knit hat and is offering the pattern free on her site until 1/15.

Stash-buster!  I immediately dragged out the mesh cube hidden behind the ficus in my office.  This cube holds my bulky yarns, several of which were the right weight for the pattern.  Picking one, I wound it and began to knit.  Clara calls it The Shoemaker’s Hat, and it’s worked from the crown down.  Here’s what mine looks like right now:

I’ll post another picture when it’s done.  And here, by the way, is the Drawstring Cowl/Hat I was dreaming about in my 12/21 blog.  I knit it over the holidays and have worn it a lot. It was a quick and easy knit, if you’re into sock yarn and lace, and it’s light but warm, totally practical.  A good project for the new year, for sure.

So I started 2012 by rereading the first 125 pages of Sweet Salt Air.  And it wasn’t only that I wanted a sure bet.  To the contrary.  I wanted to make sure it was a sure bet!  One of the most embarrassing things is when you write something on, say, page 110 that contradicts what you wrote on page 50.  Or when you inadvertently change a character’s name.  Or when you make a big deal about revealing a “secret” after it’s already been revealed.

You’re probably wondering how this can happen.  The author is the author, right?  Shouldn’t she know what she’s already written?

The problem, of course, is that thanks to constant editing, by the time I reach a particular point, I’ve written the story any number of ways.  Periodically, I need to reread to remind myself of my final choices.

In the case of Sweet Salt Air, I did catch a few inconsistencies.  Mostly, though, I put notations on pages where I wanted to reveal a secret sooner.  This is about pacing, which is (a) crucial and (b) forever, a work in progress.

Did I enjoy the read?  I did.  I think you’ll be pleased.

BTW, if you take a look at the side bar next to this blog, you’ll see BONUS PAGES.  Click on the one for Sweet Salt Air and you’ll find a recap of my leaks on this book to date.

This month’s leak?  Leo knows boats.