There is time to write and to live your life. Don't ignore your writing or use it as an excuse to hide from your life. Emotions, experiences, friends, family...they all give your writing depth--as long as you do write!

About Character:
Give him a compulsion and turn him loose!
Ray Bradbury

Why Write?

Our reasons for writing are the same reasons we have reading. Through writing we live other lives and explore places we can't go. We go alone, the journey is personal. If we do it right we discover something about ourselves. If we're lucky, our writings will find readers who appreciate the journey we have laid out for them.

By the way my Christmas trees are going up!

The television made a great backdrop for my flowers.

Watching television can also improve your writing. Try these exercises while viewing a favorite show.

1.Whose story is being told? Does it stay with one point of view?

2.Close your eyes and listen to the dialogue--can you tell which character is speaking or do they sound alike?

3.Can you identify the arc of the story--the conflict, the complication, the solve--and when it happens? Long running shows fall into a set patterns. Genre fiction, such as mysteries and romance, also have predicable formulas.

4.Lastly, why do you watch your favorite show? Probably for the same reason someone would read your novel--interesting characters that you care about.

Doorways into the past

Recently I read a book published in 1909. David P. Abbot's straightforward language was modern. His "Behind the Scenes with the Mediums" exposed tricks I had seen on television shows about psychic swindles. Except for a few word choices, the book could have been published anytime in the last thirty years. Yet the book I had in my hands had thick, stiff, cream-colored pages held together with strong threads, a constant reminder that these words came from the past. Near the end of his book David lamented about not finding an authentic medium. But at seventy-five he said that he would soon know what laid beyond death. Now Mr. Abbott, long dead, has spoken to me through his book in a way I doubt reading a modern reprint or by electronic means would have been possible.

Help! I'm stuck in the middle of my novel and I'm drowning.

You start a novel with an idea and leap into the first scene, knowing that the beginning can be scrutinized, revised, or even changed later. You race to the imagined ending, the reason for your book, only to find it far away. Treading water isn't enough, you'll bore your reader. To keep a reader's interest, every scene needs to add depth to the characters as well as twist and carry the plot. The middle contains the adventures that take the reader from beginning to end. the story is the journey.

So here's to middles, make them strong, make them worthwhile, and never forget how important they are.

Recipe for a Novel:

A story idea (plot)

A theme or two

A variety of characters.

Place story in a setting and stir in the characters. Allow characters to develop. Fold in themes.

Write and rewrite until novel is fully baked.

Frost with good grammar and spelling.

Serve to readers and hope they eat it up!

Okay, where's that manuscript?

Even birds seem to be nagging me.