The Pen of a Ready Writer

      How did my villain become who he is?  I felt like I needed to know.  I followed his story back to the beginning, which was, I found, a few years before his birth.     Pretty soon, I became fascinated with him.  He has qualities that I absolutely love about him, and many of his flaws I can relate to.  It is just that both his qualities and his flaws have been twisted to a point of creating evil.  As I have said in an earlier post, time and again he has been given opportunities to turn to good things, and he instead chose the wrong.  By the time the story of BB starts, he is a very bad man with little to like about him.      With my fingers flying across my keyboard, I traced the story of how his mother became queen.  I followed my villain as a little boy, watching scenes from his life.  This was all very interesting and the flashbacks began to be incorporated into my current ta...

     Have you ever written a time-traveller letter to yourself?  I started this when I was 11 years old.  It was a school assignment. Write a letter to yourself and seal it to open in 5 years.        I thought it was a silly idea.  And I was sure that I would remember every word through the five years.  However, it had to be done.      Five years later, I opened the sealed envelope with no memory of what I had written, and the contents made me laugh.  At 11 years of age, I had my life plotted out before me with startling clarity -- from jobs and accomplishments to the year I would meet my future husband and the order of children I would have.  To my 16-year-old mind, it was incredibly childish and unrealistic.      Now I see there was some truth in that early prediction, although the timing was off.  And I have continued to write letters to myself every ye...

The quote below is from The Penslayer . "It's best to remember that the reader, like an animal, can smell fear in the author."      

     “Apple butter!” a little voice exclaimed.   Belle looked up to see a small boy in the doorway.   He ran to her side and grabbed her sleeve.   “Did you bring any with you?” ~BB      Rab was hunting.   Belle watched him creeping under the ivy by the stone wall fence.   Then his body poised motionless, nothing acknowledging his mistress’ presence except the flick of his tail. ~BB      Annie stood up from the table and carried her empty bowl to the dish basin, scrubbing the remnants of oatmeal from her bowl.   She looked over her shoulder at Belle.   “Were you much frightened, miss?” she asked.   “Last night, I mean.”      Belle’s heart squeezed uncomfortably at the memory.   “Yes,” she said, simply.   She still felt a little terrified. ~BB        In all honesty, there were few flash-backs of his ...

     As I have mentioned before, there are a couple blogs that have been especially inspiring to me as a writer.  Periodically, I analyze these blogs -- what exactly do I love about them?  What makes me keep coming back for more?  And, as I marvel at their greatness, I hope to one day be able to write just as well.      Over the past few weeks, I took a different tactic.  I started reading the archives of one of the blogs, pouring over the posts from her first year.  And you know what?  While sparkling with potential, they were not so great as to have captivated me.      Those clumsy attempts at blogging are now hidden in the archives, but I feel that I am currently writing my own archives.  The encouragment in this is that, as I continue to work on it, I have every bit as much of a chance for excellence.  I have a tendency to want to do something perfectly from the moment I start it, b...

Talking on the phone      I spoke with a representative from a self-publishing company the other day.  None of my projects are ready to publish, but it is sometimes beneficial to study your publishing options ahead of time.  I looked at several companies and ordered free information packets from a couple of them.  One company then had a representative call me.      She had several interesting and helpful things to say, and perhaps I will share them in another post sometime.  But one word of wisdom appeared when I confessed I had 3 works in progress. You should focus on and finish your novels one at a time.      It's not a bad piece of advice.  I find that I do my best work when one project takes the lead and it becomes my sole focus.  So why do I have 3 projects?      Perhaps it is my immaturity as a writer.  There are times when one proj...

       My BB project has over 28,000 words now.  That makes it longer than any of my other current projects.  I think this will be a full-length novel when it is finished.      Flashbacks are a big part of this story.  The story I want to tell is the one happening in Rottly Mansion, but there is a history that affects the "now" of the story.  I feel like the reader needs to know the history in order to fully understand both my hero and my villain.  But there are many ways to introduce a reader to the history and I am experimenting with multiple types.      As the narrator, I can simply tell the history in a few short words.      Or my character can have a flashback --whatever scene they are in currently is interrupted by their mind's journey into the past where they relive some moment from their history.      Or multiple characters can discuss th...