Hello! It's been a very long time - way too long, I fear. And you have my apologies - no excuses, though. Let's get started.
First, the long awaited (I hope you've been waiting ;-)) third book is almost finished! UNPLAYABLE will be available on Amazon for Kindle and at Smashwords late next month - October.
Why the long wait? Life interfered. As it always does. Some good and some not so good. A visit to the beach with the grandkids - good. Not being paid for months of work - bad.
What? you thought authors and writers lived the high life off royalties from their books? Well, some do, but most of us don't. Most of us have to hold down full time work to supplement our habit - that would be the writing habit.
The economics of publishing are a dose of cold reality. And, with the publishing world changing so quickly, well, a writer has to move fast. I'll take up the changes in the industry in a later post. Today, let's talk about the creative process.
First, you need an idea, Fortunately, I've never been short on those. And, with the Langley Chase ladies, I've already got characters, so don't need too much development on those. Except for some back story, which seems to develop as the books are started and then finished. Plot is the next barrier, ah, challenge. But, for this discussion, let's assume that your favorite author has the idea for the book, has characters, and a plot - she knows what is going to happen.
All she has to do is sit down and write, right? Right! And here's where life interferes. Family schedules, jobs, kids, keeping a house reasonably liveable-in, vacations, cooking, shopping, keeping up with the news - all these things take away from writing time. In fact, these interruptions have been known to absorb all the time available! It's a funny thing that many writers, once they get down to writing, are willing to do a lot of things instead of write.
So, you schedule time for writing, just like you would a doctor's appointment. And you write. And sometimes it turns out good, sometimes just OK, and sometimes you write dreck. Regardless, once these good, OK and dreckish pieces are put together in a first draft, there's editing, adding, subtracting, changing, rearranging - writing a book is like a giant puzzle you have to solve.
More later. I'm off to write!
