Vacation...

This morning on my way into work, I passed a car going the other way with what looked like a surfboard on the roof. As you know, I live and work in Illinois, so either that guy was commuting a heck of a long way for a good swell or I saw what I wanted to see. Clearly, I need a vacation and it needs to be somewhere warm. (I checked on Hawaii vacations this afternoon -- a great Maui deal! I think I'm addicted.)

All of this made me think...Have you ever sat a stoplight next to or been behind another car where the people are obviously having a great time or off to do something fun? Haven't you ever wondered what it would be like to be in their car instead of yours? I don't mean in the creepy stalker way but to belong there. Or to tag along invisibly. I usually notice this kind of thing when I'm having a crappy day and want to be anywhere else but where I am. Wouldn't that be a cool power? To jump into someone else's life at any given moment. To see what their closets looked like, how they talked to their mother/husband/children, to discover all the deeper stuff about someone that you never learn from a strictly superficial meeting, to deal with someone else's (seemingly) minor problems instead of your own. And hey, you could have a computer-generated hologram for company and...oh, wait. (For those of you not up on your late eighties, early nineties Sci-fi, that's a reference to the show Quantam Leap, which pretty much did what I just described). Except no solving problems or righting wrongs, it would just be fun to see someone else's life from the inside. One of my favorite books as a kid was Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh. If you haven't read it, it's hysterical. All about a little girl who..well, spies on people. But in doing so, she becomes a part of their lives and their problems. And Harriet has her own problems as well (if you couldn't have guessed that by the fact that she's SPYING on people.)

But, I'm guessing, that no matter how much fun those people in the other car at the stoplight are having, it's the whole greener grass syndrome. Everyone has problems and craptastic moments in their lives. They just don't happen to be experiencing one at the moment. Probably all of us are the envy of someone else at a stoplight at one point or another. But because we're having a good day, we aren't thinking about it.

This occurs to me now, as I routinely battle envy for those authors whose books have sold more copies or faster or have gained shelf space in bookstores without a battle. (Tangent: But I will learn from my struggles, at least that's what I tell myself. That was always my theory with selling manuscripts too. It scared the #$%^ out of me to think about selling The Silver Spoon with the first query letter I sent out [even though that's every writer's fantasy] because that kind of enthusiasm would automatically make me worry that I couldn't do it again. And how disheartening would it be to sell your first book on your first try and then with your second book have it take year[s]? Talk about self-doubt -- eek!) I mean, even J.K. Rowling or Laurell K. Hamilton or Kelley Armstrong or Linnea Sinclair have bad days. At least, I'm pretty sure they do -- not that I would wish it on them, definitely not! (BTW, I read the prologue to Kelley's fifth book Haunted, which looks completely awesome. It's narrated by the ghost of a dead witch -- how about that for paranormal!)

As I'm writing this, it occurs to me that the urge to jump into someone else's life is probably a lot of what motivates writers to write. To me that's one of the best parts of writing, "meeting" new characters. Learning about them. "Hearing" them tell me about their lives. I love it! : )

This blog is long enough so...Tomorrow I have a question for you guys...more like an opinion poll than a trivia question -- just so you're not disappointed. (Though, trivia-wise, here's one that struck me today, when people say, "he got caught red-handed." Where did that phrase "red-handed" come from? If anyone knows off-hand -- ha! -- let me know.)

Also, as a note to those who might be interested, the Original Series Star Trek Season One DVD Collection came out last Tuesday, the day before my book was released, I might add. Considering the original Star Trek is what started me on sci-fi, I feel pretty good about that coincidence. : )

Talk to you tomorrow!