Check out what she has to say about recharging! And learn more about her at www.mjrose.com – her new book is fantastic!

The Color of Recharging by M.J. Rose

I’m busy.

I get up around 6:30 and spend the first two hours with green tea and the Internet: catching up on the news about books, publishing, marketing, and world events, checking email and responding to anything that needs immediate attention which somehow is a lot. How can so much happen overnight? Then I’m supposed to go to the gym. This happens less than I like because sometimes  too much happened overnight. If it does happen I’m home by 11:30. Then it’s an hour or two dealing with International Thriller Writers (I’m on the board), doing AuthorBuzz.com work (it’s a marketing company for authors and publishers) and lunch.

At 1PM or there about I sit down to write my current novel in progress. (These days it’s the follow up to my latest novel of suspense – THE REINCARNATIONIST) And other than a dog walk to break up the afternoon, I write until about 6.

Then a few phone calls with friends while I’m making dinner. Then dinner. Then more days than I’m happy to admit, lately most days, its more work until midnight or so. Either the novel, AuthorBuzz.com or working on my blog, or teaching (I teach a marketing class for authors – http://www.writersweekly.com/wwu/courses/marketing.html)

Which begs the question. If I’m working pretty much all day and often far into the night how do I recharge?

I love to paint. I don’t get to do it often enough but I pick up a paintbrush as often as I can. No one sees what I do – I’m just not good. But this I do for me and it recharges me like nothing else. I think because compared to writing its physical versus intellectual and cerebral versus philosophical. Paintings, like music move you without logic. Writing and reading for that matter requires thinking, logic.

I love the movement of painting. I can stare at colors for hours, mix blues and greens into each other for no other reason than seeing them bleed together like the ocean. I love the smell of paint, the sting of the turpentine in your nose, the overwhelming scent of the linseed oil, the feel of brushes, buying new brushes and running one down your cheek and feeling that smooth silky touch of the sable I love touching thick rich watercolor paper with its tiny indentations where the color pools. And I lust after the idea that when you paint you can create something in an hour or an afternoon and look at all of it at once. See the whole. Take in all of it all at the same time.

And when I emerge from the dream of those colors, as long as I don’t focus on the quality of what I’ve created, I’m ready to go back to work. More than refreshed, I’m spiritually and creatively recharged.

And lucky to have found a effort that feeds me and fuels me.

M.J. Rose (www.mjrose.com) is the internationally bestselling author of nine novels, on the board of International Thriller Writers, founder of AuthorBuzz.com and runs the popular blogs, Buzz, Balls & Hype and Backstory.

THE REINCARNATIONIST (Reincarnationist.org) is her most recent novel. It’s a Booksense pick for September and is on sale now both online and in stores.