Protecting Your Writing Time (Beware the PlayStation Monster!)©
By Mary Beth Lee

The joy of finishing my first project targeted to Blaze bombarded me every time I looked at a computer. It wasn’t the first manuscript I finished—far from it—but it was one of my all time favorites. Starting my second was no great feat at all. I wanted to write it, and I wanted to write it yesterday! Until Christmas. The bright aspiring Harlequin/Silhouette author I am, I pondered my family’s Christmas present with the intensity of a general plotting out battle lines. Writing time is a hard fought for commodity in my house. But this year, I’d discovered my ultimate fighting machine in the war for time.

PlayStation 2. Thank you Sony, you solved my problems.

My husband and daughter tore into the gift with enthusiasm, excitedly taking on each other in one war after another, leaving me precious time with which to write.

That was the plan anyway.

Instead, after ripping the package open and playing away, they called me in, tempting me with a control panel. The tantalizing colored buttons begged me to try at least once. So I did. Writing is the ultimate thrill. There’s nothing like playing God with characters’ lives. Or so I thought. I was wrong. There is a similar thrill, and it’s a live action, kick butt, fabulously crafted thrill like I hadn’t experienced since I was a kid playing Miss PacMan, eating ghosts and catching cherries with the best of them.

In one second I was hooked.

Night after night, I played, chalking up points, exploring new planets, earning the title of Queen of the PlayStation World in my house. My Christmas Break, prime writing time for a teacher, I gamed until 2 a.m. again and again, sleeping in the next day with the comforting knowledge that I’d conquered the bad guys and all was well with the world. At least until I started up the next game, the next battle, the next victory. Of course the bad guys in my book were left to shrivel up to nothingness. My poor Blaze heroine so used to swapping snappy comebacks with the hero, not to mention more pleasurable activities, was left to languish alone in her apartment—no great sex or scary villains in sight. And my hero—UGH! The incredibly sexy undercover agent who really needed my help to get out of the difficult position I’d left him in, poor guy, he waffled back and forth until he almost disappeared.

A week after school started back I snapped out of my PlayStation coma (term courtesy my 12-year-old daughter who swears the PlayStation is a mind sucking apparatus gifted to us by aliens). I realized I’d lost sight of my goals, my dreams, and worst of all, my story. I punched in number of pages completed on the tracking system I’d downloaded from Kresley Cole’s website — http://www.kresleycole.com — and it told me the ugly truth.

If I continued on at my current pace, the manuscript I hoped to finish by May 10, wouldn’t be done until September. (It didn’t actually say this, but I know it meant September 2010) The reality of the hole I’d dug myself in kicked me right back into action, and after a few days refamiliarizing myself with my story and characters, I got back to business of playing god with my creations. The PlayStation still beckons, but I ignore it. I’m a writer who works a full time job and has a family to take care of. I don’t have the time, and because of my books, I’ve got more important butts to kick.

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