▣ Winning
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What does it mean to win? I explore this question in the piece below. I remember an old poem that explored the question also. This must be an important question for me since I keep coming back to it.
For Memoirs Writers: What have you won in your life? Did you try hard to win it or was it easy? Did it make your life better?
▣ Whispers is coming on the wind
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I have started Whispers now. It is set in Hillsboro and is a sequel to The Smelly Man. I started on Saturday and I'm on Chapter four now. So far, moving right along. It had to make way for other things I'm doing and now it's to the front of the line. I have until the end of the year to finish it. I've been a little worried because I've been so late getting started.
For any of my readers who liked Zip Collins from The Smelly Man, as I did, he's back. This time he's trying to solve the murder for which his son Boyd ahd been imprisoned.
Meanwhile, Shattered Hart is being read by my readers. When they are finished I'll do my final re-write.
For any memoirs writers: Write about someone or something that has kept re-occurring in your life. A person who keeps turning up like a bad (or good) penny. A situation that has repeated itself.
▣ Back again after much procrastination
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I've been working on re-writes to Shattered Hart. I did three re-writes and have now put the manuscript to my readers. Meanwhile, I wrote some in my memoirs which I do in between novels. Today I started to create the characters for Whispers in the Mind which will be a sequel to The Smelly Man and which will be set in Hillsboro, Ohio.
I know it's been a while since I've posted anything but hopefully I'll do better now.
For Memoirs Writers: What have you procrastinated about? Is there something you put off that had dire consequences? Is this a major problem for you? What delay caused unforseen results?
▣ What is the mystery?
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This past weekend I had a booth at the Dogwood Festival in Piketon, Ohio. I'd been there the two previous years but I found things had changed a lot since last year. One they raised the price to set up so fewer people did which didn't help the Festival. Two, there were fewer people attending. In previous years many had attended from all around the state...not so this time. Also people were actively stating that they had cash flow problems and in some cases they wanted to barter something for books. Now at book fairs other writers often want to trade books and a person once traded me a CD for one of my books, however, I'd never heard this at a festival before.
I go to the festivals in some counties where there are no bookstores if I have a book set in that county.This also helps to advertise. I'll be going to Adams county to the library for a reading and book signing on May 15th.
▣ Challenge to keep moving forward
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I'm reviewing notes from a workshop where the presenter said the biggest challenge is to stay published once you are. He sail usualling a publisher offers only a one book deal. That seems right to me. He also said diversification is the key and recommends Facebook, twitter, and myspace. However, he says to be careful of blogs. I don't get why.
He advises that we work harder and smarter and I agree with that. He also mentions that writing is expensive since no one will pay to put you on the road any more.
He advised that you should write what you have a passion for and not nescessarily what you know which is opposite of what many say. I say that if you have a passion for it, you probably know a lot about it too.
He says to build a platform with short stories that are 3,500 to 4,000 words. Agents will troll and find these. He discourages e-books especially for mysteries, and mentions that libraries have no money.
In his mind, the trend is to character driven books, not plot driven and the book should be between 60,000 and 100,000 words (Mine range from 71,000 to 87,000, so I'm in that ball park.
For Memoirs writers: What is your passion...or what was your passion. Is it a person, place, thing or what?
▣ Re- Write is a fright...
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I hate re-writing but with practice over ten novels it has gotten easier, thank goodness. Now doing re-writes to Dream Buster.
Since I'm now in between books, I should be able to take a vacation but instead I'm researching the next book and re-writing the old one. Below I've told you how to take a weeks vacation while working a full time job however, just in case someone wants a vacation but doesn't have the time to do it.
For memoirs writers: What is your most hated tasks in life and how do you motivate yourself to do them?