I’ve been having trouble for the past week getting back into the flow of my writing—if Darin takes any more vacations (and then promptly falls ill), I’ll probably be done for.

Beyond that, however, I had the weirdest experience last week while writing.

I described it to a friend of mine this way: You know how when you’re driving, you zone out, and suddenly you come to and think, Why am I in Pasadena? (She lives in LA. It’s far more likely she’d end up in Pasadena than, say, I would.)

I had the same thing happen to me last week while writing.

I had the weirdest feeling of suddenly “coming to” and realizing that everything I was writing was MADE UP.

This was not my usual self-flagellation—I wasn’t on my own case for untrue stuff. This was more along the lines of suddenly realizing that writing fiction is the act of making shit up.

I’ve been writing fiction since I was 4. (Yes. This is true. I wrote—in my own handwriting—a short story for my grandparents about a magic well.) And only last week did I have any sense of how deeply odd this little occupation of mine is. These images in my head? Not really there! These words I put down on the page? Describing things that are beyond not true—they’ve never happened!

It was easily the weirdest out-of-body experience I’ve ever had.

I’ve gotten over it. Well, not the point where the words are flowing again—more like being expelled, one bloody painful syllable at a time, instead of my usual typing mania—but I don’t feel quite so strange about it.

Still: I remember the sensation of looking at the screen and thinking, What the hell? No wonder people believe in possession. When your POV switches like that, it’s deeply disconcerting.

I haven’t been writing here, because I’ve been writing there. Well, I’ve also been corralling Frick and Frack hither and yon, since they have Spring Break this week. I must be the least inventive mother on record when it comes to entertaining the young of the species. But I end the day with as many kids as I started, which I consider a victory.

Having the kids on break means I don’t have the regular hours to write. I am nearing the end of the rewrite, and I feel the pull of gravity, propelling me to finish this thing. I already know that when I am done with this draft I will have to go through it again, emphasize on some character things, possibly condense or expand other elements. But I want to finish this whole, complete draft, and I find it’s actually not hard to make the time at the moment. Last night I took the iBook up to my room and wrote from 9 to 10:30.

I went out tonight. I wasted some time IM’ing with Tamar, but then at 8pm I said, “I must write! Talk to you later!” And I opened a new file to write. I have to get my main character to a confrontation with the suspected perpetrator. It’s a totally new scene, and I need a bridge scene to get to it. A simple scene, I decided. Fairly straightforward.

It’s 9:30. I’ve done 1800 words since 8pm. I’m not entirely sure they’re for the same novel I’ve been working on. The scene is weird and moody and spooky, definitely good qualities but a tone shift. And what a surprise: It’s not a simple bridge scene. My main character gets humiliated and then fails in her quest anyhow. It’s okay, I’ll make everything better next time (I sort of have to, because otherwise the book would end here).

Anyhow, that’s where my head’s been. I kind of wish I were just done with this damn thing already — I read Rachel Caine’s blog and she regularly does 5000 to 7000 words a day, it seems, and apparently when she’s done she has a finished book. I’m really hoping that’s a learnable skill. I think I’m getting actually completing a novel down. Now the next step is in a timely fashion.

And if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to writing.

It’s National Novel Editing Month and I have been dutifully putting in my 50 hours (or thereabouts). Originally my goal was to get the rewrite to the end of Act 2 by the end of March, but I’m not at all sure that’s going to happen now. Particularly as I’m, you know, writing entirely new chapters. (The story remains the same; the plot has changed somewhat.) But I write. I’m a much happier person when I’ve written. Somewhere I’ll put up a sign to remind myself of that.

Wherever I sit down to write, however, I need music. I ripped a couple hundred albums* in November in order to build up a backlog of music and promptly filled up my 15 gig iPod. However, I don’t use the iPod for writing; I use it in the car. When I write, I whip out a pair of headphones and listen to music off my iBook.

I need either instrumental music or music with lyrics I can tune out. For the past several months I’ve been listening to the New Age playlist—Enya, Vangelis, Mike Oldfield, Andreas Vollenweider. It’s a big playlist, and while I’ve heard many of the selections multiple times, I’m sure I haven’t heard all of them, because I keep hitting Shuffle. But I’ve gotten tired of that and have now created the Classical playlist, which has an eclectic mix of Beethoven, Philip Glass, Gregorian chants, and Soeur Marie Keyrouz. I have decided I am not as enamored of Philip Glass as Darin apparently is (since Darin has bought all of his CDs).

I think I’m going to start ripping more CDs and see if I can’t do all of the soundtracks Darin has bought over the years.

My friend Mary says she likes to write to salsa. (She also mentioned another type of music that had, I believe, a Portuguese name, but I can’t remember what it is now.) Maybe I should try that. God knows it’s certainly worked magic for her.

For other writers out there: do you like to write to music? Does it have to be a certain type of music? Or do you come up with music that has a flavor for the type of scene/story you’re writing?

And I am open to any suggestions for music to check out that is mostly instrumental or has singing that preferably is in another language. I have some French jazz that I listen to occasionally, but I keep trying to understand the French, so that doesn’t work as well.

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*All albums I own, for what it’s worth. Can’t believe I even feel compelled to say that.