Time and Energy Vampires

These days vampires are hot, especially in romantic fiction. My daughter almost devours (pun intended) vampire-themed novels.

But those aren't the vampires I'm talking about. No, I'm talking about the time and energy vampires - the ones that just suck up everything that they can and then move on not caring about the damage they've done.

The big one in my book is the spam and phising emails. Oh sure, there are the spam filters but every now and then something legitimate gets rounded up with the criminal ones and you have to sort through to make sure you don't delete something you actually need. It's the same for junk email - and of course the criminals and marketers (not always the same thing) are getting better at masquerading as legitimate businesses to lure you in. I fantisize about writing a mystery where the main victim is a spammer - a very dead spammer! I was excited when a notorious spammer was arrested in the Seattle area this past week, but alas, he's just one of many and probably not the big Kahuna of spamming. So, the spam will continue and get worse.

Then there are the energy vampires in the form of people. The ones who should be able to help themselves but make it an art form not to. They're not bad people - not really. They just want to absorb as much as possible from you because in some ways they admire you, especially if you've written a book.

See, everyone pretty much has a silent desire to write a book and become pubilshed. It's quite a universal fantasy but few figure out how to turn the dream into reality, in part because most underestimate just how hard and challenging it is to write. Many stay in the dream phase because it's just more fun to fantasize about it than it is to actually execute the BIS rule - Butt In Seat - and type (some say AIS but we'll stick with BIS). They mistakenly think that they will get what they need through osmosis - at least the energy vampires do.

That's why when I find myself surrounded by writers who are willing to put in the time and effort to move forward in their writing process it's exciting.

Todd and I spent Memorial Day Weekend at a retreat for a writer's group that asked Todd to present his Novelist's Boot Camp. It was such a wonderful experience to be around so many motivated people at all levels of the writing experience who really wanted to move forward in the writing process. The energy was uplifting and there weren't any energy vampires there. Although I suspect there were a few of those romantic type vampires on the pages of some wips (works in progress).