MamaWriters as thrilled to have Alyssa Day with us today!  Her Warriors of Poseidon books have been hitting the lists left and right, and her  latest release, ATLANTIS REDEEMED, another sexy suspenseful paranormal released just last week.  Alyssa does it all with two kids, a Navy warrior husband, and a great number of Pugs.

Please help us welcome Alyssa Day!

Number Two Pencils

alesiahollidayToday I spent the morning at my daughter’s school proctoring one of those state-mandated standardized tests for a fifth-grade class.  At each desk, next to the dreaded text booklet, sat two freshly sharpened number two pencils.

It brought back a lot of memories.

I was one of those dorky, nerdy, (though we didn’t call it that then) brainy kids who loved the annual trip to the school supply school. Pencils and notebooks represented all of the stories as yet unwritten; the ideas as yet undreamed.  Still today, I am like a kid in a candy shop in the office supply store.  I probably own more post-it notes and markers and pens and pencils and notepads, in more different colors (ooh! Shiny!) than the law allows.  Ask most writers, from what my friends tell me, and you’ll find the same.  We’re all entranced with new journals, and pens, and shiny little objects to fill up our bookshelves and desk drawers.

They’re tools, of course, weapons in the writer’s arsenal, but they’re more than that.  They’re the freshly sharpened means to a magical end—the wonderful worlds and fully developed characters and emotionally resonant stories we create in the fascinating nooks and crannies of our writers’ brains.  But since (unfortunately, how cool would that be??) we can’t dump our brain against a computer screen and have the stories appear, we sharpen our pencils, fire up the laptop, pull out a notebook, and get to work.

Creating the impossible. Dreaming the dream.  Writing the stories that shape our novels.  The act of creation should be the joy, too, not simply the satisfaction of writing THE END.  The journey, to go a little Zen writer on you, should be the thing.  Just you and the blank page and that freshly sharpened pencil.

So there I was.  Surrounded by all of those wonderful young minds, focusing so intently, writing frantically and chewing on the eraser tips when book_redeemed_150they paused.  What was a writer to do?  I picked up my own pencil and began a new story.  I didn’t use these exact words, but mine meant the very same thing:

Once upon a time . . .

May all your endings be happy, and all your number two pencils be freshly sharpened.

Hugs,

Alyssa

Alyssa Day is the RITA-award winning and New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of the Warriors of Poseidon series about a race of warriors from the lost continent of Atlantis who fall into a world-bending kind of love with human women with very special talents.  Her newest release, ATLANTIS REDEEMED, is in stores now:   When 2,000 years of lost emotion hit you all at once—do you fall in love or die?

Please visit Alyssa online at http://www.alyssaday.com for excerpts, a free short story, video interviews, and more.  Thank you!!
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