Posts Tagged ‘writing fiction’
Finished! (And a First and Fifth Draft Comparison)
I finished The Midwife’s Confession yesterday and John and I are going to see Wicked this evening to celebrate. Yeah! The last month of writing a book is sheer torture; there seems to be no way around it. Every time, I tell myself I’ll figure out a way to prevent that last month from…
Read MoreWordle Time!
I’ve completed draft four of The Midwife’s Confession (well except for the epilogue), so it’s time to see how it looks on Wordle! Wordle helps me see what words I’ve overused. Of course the character names (and there are a lot of them!) are all over the place. Noelle, front and center, is the midwife.…
Read MoreKnow When to Fold 'Em
Whoa, this is what I look like after a few weeks of working ’round the clock. Tired. John snapped this pic of me at Starbucks this morning while I was writing. He said “Give me a big smile!” and I thought I was. I think I’m fried! It’s always this way in the month before…
Read MoreSometimes Change is Good
If you had a chance to change something you created a decade ago, would you take it? I have that opportunity as some of my older books are being reissued, and since I’ve been asked if the reissued books are identical to the originals, I thought I’d talk about that here. The truth is, it varies from book to…
Read MoreSam-I-Am
Is your name Sam? Probably not. Neither is mine. Neither are six of the seven major characters in my work-in-progress, The Midwife’s Confession. But last night, my Word program suddenly decided that if the name Sam was good enough for the guy who really is named Sam in the story, well then, it’s good enough for…
Read MoreMy Newest Fan
This is Maddie. Short for Madison. Madison belongs to Angie, the receptionist at my rheumatologist’s office. Angie likes my books, but she had no idea that Maddie shared her ‘taste’. Maddie’s a speed eater, devouring The Bay at Midnight in one sitting, just like my most faithful readers. Angie asked me to sign what remains of…
Read MoreThe Last Song
Today is our last full day on Tybee Island. All five of us have worked so hard and achieved or surpassed our goals each day. So far. I have some hefty goals for today and can’t wait to buckle down. I’m so grateful to Mary Kay Andrews for inviting us to her beautiful cottage in…
Read MoreWriter's Block: the Tough Love Approach
Writers spend hours and hours talking about writer’s block and in my opinion, there’s no greater waste of time. Workshops at conferences are devoted to the topic, and writing magazines often run articles offering tips on coping with that paralytic state. For those of you who are readers instead of writers, writer’s block is a panic-inducing feeling that you can’t…
Read MoreThirty Years Ago. . .
About thirty years ago, I was published for the first time. Not a novel, but an op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times. I was working as a hospital social worker at the time, and after a particularly moving encounter with a family in the ER, I took a break and wrote this fictionalized account…
Read MoreDe-Trite-Us
One of the worst crimes a writer can commit is to be predictable in his or her storyline and characters. This holds true even in genre fiction, where a certain formula is generally followed: In a romance, boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy and girl reunite forever. In a mystery, a crime occurs, there…
Read More