What I'm Working On....

Well, I'm HAPPY to say that this weekend I finished my second puzzle book. I am waiting to hear back from my editor to approve the changes I had to make before I hit send.

With this complete, I can concentrate on revising a secondary character's story from a full manuscript that I have out with an editor.

That is all for now. Happy writing. Take care!

My Family and My Writing

Since I live on my own, I don’t have to worry about spending hours in front of the computer. Most of my writing is done in the late evening. I’m very definitely a night owl. I don’t do mornings! And at least retirement means I can stay up late any night I want to unless there’s a specific reason why I have to get up early the next day.

When I was married, my ex-husband had no interest at all in my writing. That wasn’t the reason why we divorced, I hasten to add! But when I was writing in my 20’s and 30’s, I felt very isolated. In those days before the internet, I knew no other writers and only a handful of my friends actually knew that I was a writer.

My two daughters have simply taken it for granted that I had books published when they were small, but only one of them has actually read my books.

So my ‘writing support’ now comes from my internet friends. I’ve made several through my West Wing stories, and other through the yahoo lists for writers, including two of my critique partners who are members of this blog.

Having been in a situation where I had no-one to talk to about my stories, I really appreciate all the links and support I now enjoy through the internet.

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.
Travel safe if you are journeying.
Lump-free gravy, and lots of left-overs.
Ana

Writing around family life

I did not think to start writing until my children graduated from high school. At first my husband was bothered by the time I spent writing, for this was time I could spend with him. He'd interrupt by asking me to find something for him. He'd call out that I should come look at something or ask outright when I'd be done.

Then our youngest daughter went to film school. Financially vested, he picked up screenwriting protocols and shooting techniques. He watches independent films, and can now debate plot arcs and character development. He notes inconsistencies in sun angle, cloud cover, seasonal leaf color. (He'd be a great script supervisor.) He guesses locations--and is often right.

But while he can be a paper tiger, I am responsible for claiming--and maximizing--my writing time. As a prepublished author, I need to set internal deadlines. I have not yet set whether these should be scenes or targeted word count, but I am figuring it out.

How does your family feel about your hours in chair?

My husband and son are used to seeing me in the chair. My husband is glad that it keeps me busy during the day, and my son doesn't understand what I do until the checks come in the mail.

Since I'm a stay at home Mom, it doesn't affect them much. When they are home, we gather in the living room, eat dinner, talk, and watch TV. During the evening, if I'm able to print my work, I'll do it during commercials or while I'm watching my son play Playstation online.

My family and friends are supportive and are looking forward to reading my first novel. I've been doing this for SO long, I have to be honest and admit that I really don't want anyone I know to read it, or at least tell me they read it.

I'm afraid it will be like when you hear all these great things about a movie and then when you go see it, you're disappointed.

Does this make sense?

Why did you stop writing and what made you restart?

I stopped writing for a multitude of reasons. Procrastination and time were the key factors.

Before I recommitted to writing, I believed that I could only write if I had large chunks of time. And I could put off my writing responsibilities until the "muse" touched me, until I felt inspired.

All of that was a crock.

Truthfully, I didn't write because I was always putting things off. I was a sloppy and lazy procrastinator. I relished in the luxury of saying I was a writer, but I never put in the daily writing habit.

Also, I didn't write because I lacked the basic discipline of creating a daily writing habit. I believed that I needed the time and space to binge write. When I got the time--a vacation or a long weekend, I wrote, but I took some much time to reacquaint myself with the characters and plot that I didn't spend a lot of time expanding and writing the novel. I was caught in a vicious cycle.

Now, I realize that writing is a daily habit. I acknowledge my faults--not being a good time manager and being a chronic deadline hitter and a chronic procrastinator. I work around and with those things. Once I realized my faults and once I realized why I wasn't writing, that helped me to restart.

Stopping and Starting

I didn’t stop completely, but my writing became more spasmodic as ‘real life’ got in the way. My husband and I divorced in the 70’s when my daughters were 6 and 4, so I was a single parent with a full-time teaching job.

A couple of rejections by Mills and Boon in the 80’s were not unexpected because their format had changed and I had absolutely no empathy with domineering males who virtually raped wimpy females to tame them. Not my scene at all!

I didn’t have the time either to research other publishers, so apart from a few short stories at the beginning of the 90’s, I stopped writing fiction.

It’s probably also true to say that when a five-year relationship ended in the early 90’s, I was not in best frame of mind to write romances that had happy endings!

I turned instead to writing articles for the UK Girl Guiding magazine. After my first series of articles, I had my own ‘slot’ in the magazine for about 5 years.

My return to fiction writing was unpremeditated and totally unexpected. As a fan of the ‘The West Wing’, I made contact with other fans and one of them introduced me to fanfiction. She and I exchanged long emails about our favourite characters, Jed and Abbey, and from these came an idea for a story. I started to write it and, almost before I knew it, I was back in the swing of fiction again, with – eventually - an 80,000 word story. I wrote it ‘by the seat of my pants’ and discovered again the joy of characters who took me along with them. I just started with a basic idea, and the whole thing developed from that. Of course, the characters were already there for me, and it helped being able to hear the voices of Martin Sheen and Stockard Channing in my head, as well as the other actors in the show.

I had no intention of ever ‘publishing’ it, but another friend finally persuaded me to post it on one of the West Wing yahoo lists. I was nervous – this was my first venture into fiction for many years, but the response I got from members of the list encouraged me and helped to rebuild my confidence.

I went on to write 4 more West Wing stories, one of which is still ongoing. Another friend, with far more computer know-how than I have, has put them on to the fanfiction.net site and I’ve had complimentary feedback there too.

I still had no thoughts of writing anything other than West Wing fanfiction – until I went on an American Civil War battlefields tour in 2008. Also on the tour was a best-selling Harlequin writer, Linda Lael Miller, who was doing the tour as part of her research for a Civil War trilogy. She and I talked a lot during the week and her encouragement made me think about writing novels again.

When I got home, I dug out one of the old novels I’d written in the 80’s and decided to re-vamp and update it. It developed into a very different story from my original effort, another example of the characters taking over.

Since then – well, I’ve been writing constantly – and enjoying every minute of it (well, almost!)