The Writing Spirit by Ariel Tachna

So how does a moderately successful m/m romance writer spend her Friday evenings?  I can’t speak for anyone else, but I like to spend mine at The Wine Merchant, a local wine shop with international flavor.  I admit it, I’m a wine snob.  I have been since I first discovered wine, almost twenty years ago, as a junior in college in Dijon, France.  Yes, that’s right.  I had the very good fortune to spend an extended period of time not just in the premier wine producing region of the world, but living with the son of a vintner whose youngest daughter married into a family of vintners.  

I am spoiled.

The semester in France did wonders for my appreciation of Burgundy wine, but there’s a whole, big world out there, and with the help of a good friend and The Wine Merchant, I’m slowly discovering it a region at a time.  The wine tastings are not only a great way to discover new wines (I almost never go home without a bottle or few), they’re also a great way to spend an evening with friends.  Whether it’s just Nessa and me or whether we have a huge crowd, the casual atmosphere and go-at-your-own pace evening provide a great social venue.  Nessa and I have plotted entire stories, solved the world’s problems—or at least our own—and critiqued the latest round of movie or TV offerings, among other things, as we sample the best of what The Wine Merchant has to offer.  

Being a writer is, by its very nature, a somewhat solitary occupation.  I don’t know very many writers who can sit in a room full of people and concentrate on the characters in their heads.  Inspiration, however, requires outside stimulation and the wine tastings are a perfect opportunity for me to blend my love of wine with my occasional need to get out of my house and into the rest of the world.  I can mingle or not, observe or participate, enabled by the glass in my hand to maintain my silence by sipping at the opportune moment or to join in a conversation by making an observation about the wine I’ve just sipped.  And the things I overhear!  If I wrote humor, I’d have a never-ending supply of funny moments from the evenings, snatches of conversation that probably made perfect sense in context.  I don’t have the whole story, though, just that random line, to which I can attach any context I want.  The best one yet?  “It’s not that I sell drugs or anything, but….”  The rest of the utterance was lost to the noise of the crowd, but I bet we can all finish that sentence.

Go ahead.  Give it a try.  You never know.  There might be a writer lurking inside of you too.

You can find Ariel Tachna at www.arieltachna.com and buy her books at www.dreamspinnerpress.com or any retail outlet - amazon, ARe, fictionwise, etc