Artists – painters, sculptors, authors, poets, et al – express emotion with their work. Authors creating characters that show only one emotion is akin to painters rendering on the canvas in only one color, or at worst, only one hue of that color. Making lists of emotional attributes works for some authors; interviewing them works […]
My new work in progress (wip) is on a hit list. In the story, the heroine chases and pins down especially slippery pieces of information. I know who the assassins are – search engines. They have become so ubiquitous that the name of one of them is now the verb for using them all (“Google […]
I am now a stalker.That’s a great opening line. Maybe I’ll use it in one of my next novels. But on second thought, it’s probably already been used. In this case, though dramatic, it’s not nearly the truth. I have, though, become an observer. Instead of sitting in a dark, isolated coffee shop, I now […]
Warrior. That’s what the Cowardly Lion is in comparison with me last week. I’d been hiding from my manuscript since that Monday. More than one hundred pages into a four hundred page rewrite, and I choked – scared off by this one scene. I had outlined it, decomposed it, and placed its elements in my […]
Without a doubt, Kimba – our semi long-haired stray cat, was the most nervous animal I’d ever met. It had nothing to do with hot tin roofs; she just couldn’t adjust to surprises. Her earlier life was a mystery; she adopted us when she was fully grown. But it can’t have been stable. Whenever I cleaned, […]
Consider a clear, still mountain pool. Beautiful, isnt it? A disturbance – maybe a passing automobile – causes a rock to slide down the mountain side, hit a ledge and bounce into the water. Immediately, there are easily discernible ripples from the point of impact. Now visualize that the pool has several waterfalls at one […]
Now that I’ve eliminated my intrusive voice, coaxed the plots and subplots to play nicely together, gotten control of pacing, and overcome my hesitance with love scenes, it’s time to complete the set of revision artifacts (outline and scene notes) for moving the plots toward their climaxes. I was very excited about getting to this […]
My biggest nemesis – the love scene. I interrupted my progress this week, working myself into a snit about it. The way my story is written, the scenes have to be hot and passionate; expressing the love between two strong, independent people. The problem? I’m not that into sex. Let me clarify – I’m not that […]
It was one of the nights that I spend with other parents who have also accompanied their children to ballet classes. Sometimes there’s conversation, sometimes we’ve brought something to work on, sometimes both. For me, it’s always both – I try never to ignore a nice chunk of writing time. A new gentleman struck up […]
Zipping merrily along through my revision outline; making great progress. In the zone, every thought had a home. And then…I rounded a blind curve and had to skid to a brain locking stop. Hit an obstacle. Makes me crazy when that happens. Actually, the obstacle was an event. I had shown it from the heroine’s […]
