So excited about this new book! I just finished the first draft, and am looking for beta readers before I start querying agents. See the description below:

As Cassie comes to terms with the painful end of her marriage and the possibility of losing her daughter, she struggles with the resultant depression and its impact on her life and high-power career. At the same time, she finds herself on the dating scene for the first time as an adult, with a newfound sexual appetite due to either extreme deprivation or the late-thirties surge of hormones she’s heard about (and can be equally satisfied by a strapping man or a well-apportioned vibrator). But none of it's easy – she's a mess of contradicting emotions, muddled thinking and a neediness that's foreign to her. More than anything, she wants to conquer her Depression and feel whole again.
 
But then Cassie meets two unlikely friends in Group Therapy – Tasha, who combats the "bad thoughts" when she's not advising Cassie on the virtues of different sex toys or the expression of anger through destruction of marital property (both of which prove to be quite therapeutic), and Sophie, who says the codes all “add up” and warns of the neighbor in the surveillance van when she's not leading her friends in unconventional workout sessions at the park, and only when her meds stop working. They give Cassie perspective and something more important – acceptance. Plus, they’ve reminded her how to laugh – because cock-eyed nipples and front-farts are funny, even when you’re in the dark place.
 
But Cassie understands the risk, that they are feeding into each other’s illness rather than helping each other get better. Because the issues these women face are real, and they’re serious – suicide attempts and psychosis, debilitating depression and lost custody of children. And even when they apply the one rule they can all agree on – that they can’t all be crazy at the same time – it may not be enough to protect them from themselves.
 
SEX TOYS AND PSYCH MEDS is a work of women’s fiction, and is complete at approximately 87,000 words. A cross between the witty poignancy of Cathy Lamb and the raw honesty of Cheryl Strayed, SEX TOYS AND PSYCH MEDS explores the gritty reality of mental illness and redefining yourself at mid-life with the often humorous realities of adult dating and the beauty of unexpected friendship. 

At the opening of Odyssey, Homer appealed to his muse for the inspiration to tell his story. Shakespeare did the same thing in a number of his plays. Let’s face it, when it comes to art, inspiration is the queen on high.

And sure, those moments when inspiration strikes are exhilarating. But let’s face it, the muses are tempestuous and unreliable. Inspiration is demanding, pushy, and withholding in turns to keep us under their thumb.

The muses keep us up late when we know we should be sleeping, strike in the shower where we can’t reach a pen, and then abandon us for weeks without a word.

But you don’t have to be inspiration’s beck and call any longer. In fact, breaking free is a lot easier than you might think. Try out these three tactics and see for yourself.

Work at the same time, consistently.

Our brains are made for habit. If you put in the time to establish a consistent behavior pattern (science says it takes about three weeks), the force of habit begins to take over, and your brain will respond by getting into writer mode in your designated writing time.

You don’t have to write every single day for this to work, just set a regular routine for yourself—I recommend at least one block of time a week. Then, guard that time with your life.

Show up no matter what, even if it’s just you and the blank screen and utter silence. Don’t worry, the words will come.

Keep an idea log.

One of the frustrating things about writing is the time required to take an idea from conception to completion. But you can also use this to your advantage.

Ideas take just seconds to think up. They accumulate much faster than finished works, so when it’s time to start a new project, the only question you should ever have is, “which one do I pick up next?”

So when inspiration does hit, encourage it by taking swift action—write it down and store it somewhere safe. Then all those pieces of inspiration in one place, ready to spring into a story whenever you’re ready for it.

There’s a lot of different ways to do this, from the classic pocket journal to apps like Evernote. Personally, I use my smartphone to email them to myself.

Create rituals.

Brilliant creative through the ages have been known for their quirky rituals. Nikola Tesla had dinner at the Waldorf every night at 8 p.m. James Joyce woke at 10 a.m. each day, then laid in bed an hour after waking up each morning.

You can do this, too.

Maybe not the sleeping ‘til 10 necessarily, but you should find your own ways to trigger in your mind that it’s now writing time. Do this consistently every time you write, and you’ll find that over time it gets easier to settle into writing mode and get the words on the page, regardless of when or where you are.

Inspiration Rules, But So Do You

It’s as easy as that—a little consistency in your schedule, a notebook in your pocket, a trigger to get your mind in gear. Put these tricks to work, and you’ll be on your way to taking charge of your creativity for the long haul.

And finally, you can stop sitting around waiting for inspiration to drop by. The better and more consistently you stick them, the more you’ll find that inspiration shows up exactly when you want it to, freeing you to reclaim your creative time and get some real writing done.

Consider the moments when you’ve had your big aha moments in the past—what was consistent around them? A time of day? A state of mind? A place? A mood?

“Antonio,” a voice says. It is raspy yet authoritative, and is at once distantly familiar to me, the way hearing an old song can resurrect a forgotten feeling and a glimpse of who you once were.

The shadows of his face, the way his cheeks sank like pools and his eyes floated above dark wells, which usually seemed indicative of his ill health and hard living, now seemed fitting – a tribute to death.

I am such a sucker for his coffee eyes with their dark lashes, like a ring of black flames. I think I’m trying to read my future in those eyes – like they are black tea, and the leaves in their depths hold some secret for me.

The Customs officer is wearing a brown uniform and has sideburns. The skin on his hands is thin and his veins stand out like a topographic mapping of a mountain chain.

The driver takes us down potholed streets, in and out of other taxis and cars and government vehicles. Buildings in every color line up to greet us like little girls dressed up for an Easter parade.

23 Essential Quotes from Ernest Hemingway About Writing by Joe Bunting
All quotes taken from A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway’s memoir about his life as a writer in Paris:

1. “Do not worry. You have always written before…”

I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, “Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now.”

2. All You Need to Write Is…

The blue-backed notebooks, the two pencils and the pencil sharpener (a pocket knife was too wasteful), the marble topped tables, the smell of early morning, sweeping out and mopping, and luck were all you needed. For luck, you carried a horse chestnut and a rabbit’s foot in your right pocket.

3. Write One True Sentence

“All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.” So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there. It was easy then because there was always one true sentence that I knew or had seen or had heard someone say.

4. Cut Out the Ornamentation

If I started to write elaborately, or like someone introducing or presenting something, I found that I could cut that scrollwork or ornament out and throw it away and start with the first true simple declarative sentence I had written.

5. Don’t Think About Your Writing When you’re Not Writing

It was in that room too that I learned not to think about anything that I was writing from the time I stopped writing until I started again the next day. That way my subconscious would be working on it and at the same time I would be listening to other people and noticing everything.

6. Write as Straight as You Can Ernest Hemingway to F. Scott Fitzgerald:

“Write the best story that you can and write it as straight as you can.”

7. Write What You Know

Up in that room I decided that I would write one story about each thing that I knew about. I was trying to do this all the time I was writing, and it was good and severe discipline.

8. Allow Painters to Influence You

I was learning something from the painting of Cézanne that made writing simple true sentences far from enough to make the stories have the dimensions that I was trying to put in them. I was learning very much from him but I was not articulate enough to explain it to anyone. Besides it was a secret.

9. Don’t Repeat Yourself

This book began magnificently, went on very well for a long way with great stretches of great brilliance and then went on endlessly in repetitions that a more conscientious and less lazy writer would have put in the waste basket.

10. Exercise

It was necessary to get exercise, to be tired in the body, and it was very good to make love with whom you loved. That was better than anything. But afterwards, when you were empty, it was necessary to read in order not to think or worry about your work until you could do it again.

11. Never Empty the Well of Your Writing

I had learned already never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.

12. After You Write, Read When

I was writing, it was necessary for me to read after I had written. If you kept thinking about it, you would lose the thing that you were writing before you could go on with it the next day.

13. Let the Pressure Build When

I had to write it, then it would be the only thing to do and there would be no choice. Let the pressure build. In the meantime I would write a long story about whatever I knew best.

14. What Do You know Best?

What did I know best that I had not written about and lost? What did I know about truly and care for the most? There was no choice at all.

15. Omit Anything You Want (As Long As You Know You’re Doing It)

It was a very simple story called “Out of Season” and I had omitted the real end of it which was that the old man hanged himself. This was omitted on my new theory that you could omit anything if you knew that you omitted and the omitted part would strengthen the story and make people feel something more than they understood.

16. Stay Sound in Your Head All

I must do now was stay sound and good in my head until morning when I would start to work again.

17. If You Can’t Write, Don’t Write

To an aspiring writer: “You shouldn’t write if you can’t write.”

18. It’s Okay to Be Shy …

[F. Scott Fitzgerald] had the shyness about it that all non-conceited writers have when they have done something very fine.

19. But Don’t Pimp Your Writing

[F. Scott Fitzgerald] had told me at the Closerie des Lilas how he wrote what he thought were good stories, and which really were good stories for the Post, and then changed them for submission, knowing exactly how he must make the twists that made them into salable magazine stories. I had been shocked at this and I said I thought it was whoring…. I said that I did not believe anyone could write any way except the very best he could write without destroying his talent.

20. Break Down Your Writing

Since I had started to break down all my writing and get rid of all facility and try to make instead of describe, writing had been wonderful to do. But it was very difficult, and I did not know how I would ever write anything as long as a novel. It often took me a full morning of work to write a paragraph.

21. Forget Living the “Literary Life”

I was getting tired of the literary life, if this was the literary life that I was leading, and already I missed not working and I felt the death loneliness that comes at the end of every day that is wasted in your life.

22. Don’t Drink While You Write

My training was never to drink after dinner nor before I wrote nor while I was writing.

23. Don’t Judge Your Writing

Until the Next Day After writing a story I was always empty and both sad and happy, as though I had made love, and I was sure this was a very good story although I would not know truly how good until I read it over the next day.

Bonus Quotes from Hemingway’s Mentors These quotes are not from Ernest Hemingway, but they are tips to Ernest Hemingway from his friends and mentors which he captured in A Moveable Feast:

24. Be Careful About Writing About Sex

“It’s good,” [Gertrude Stein] said. “That’s not the question at all. But it is inaccrochable. That means it is like a picture that a painter paints and then he cannot hang it when he has a show and nobody will buy it because they cannot hang it either.”

25. What We Lack Most

“We need more true mystery in our lives, Hem,” [Evan Shipman] once said to me. “The completely unambitious writer and the really good unpublished poem are the things we lack most at this time. There is, of course, the problem of sustenance.”

26. Only Read What Is Good Gertrude Stein told Ernest Hemingway:

You should only read what is truly good or what is frankly bad.

See link below for a great post about researching and writing.

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