Be certain you tie up all your loose ends. I am writing another true crime mystery. I was knee-deep in blood in the lobby and elevator car of my detectives’ latest case. The tiny dog had survived the barrage of bullets but his owner did not. Bodies are loaded up for transport to the ME’s morgue, CSI is working the scene and….okay…what do I do with the dog?
While you’re writing (and rewriting), be aware of your loose ends. Have you resolved all of them?
“All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer.” ― Ernest Hemingway
“A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.” ― G.K. Chesterton
“I’ve got the key to my castle in the air, but whether I can unlock the door remains to be seen.” ― Louisa May Alcott
the entire Collection of Motivational Moments for Writers can be found in one book, How To Write Creatively
MY BLOG features INTERVIEWS with best-selling AUTHORS! October: Alretha Thomas. November: Joe English. December: Jayne Ann Krentz (Amanda Quick) January: Molly Gloss and in early 2019 Patrick Canning. To receive my posts sign up for my On the home page, enter your email address. Thanks!
…and put out a new ‘edition’. I wrote Book #1 of my true crime series, Art of Murder, back in 2011. Circumstances (I fired my publisher) led me to review and rewrite this book. Adding a new dynamic cover, new title (Brush with Murder) and added 6000 new words. A love interest walked into Ben’s life and I pulled that thread.
Most indie publishing platforms allow you to change the ‘interior files’ post-publish and change the cover when you’ve rewritten the book. In my case, since I was also changing the title, I issued the book as a new ‘revised’ edition. The new cover, by my illustrator, David White, is sexy and hot! He does such terrific work for me.
I recommend to all writers to review things you’ve written and even published. Only good things can happen!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Coming Soon in Audio-Books: (Beneath the) Bridge of Murder Video of Murder Shadow of Murder
MY BLOG features INTERVIEWS with best-selling AUTHORS! August: Mega best selling author, Susan Mallery. September: Jonathan Rabb. October: Alretha Thomas. November: Joe English. December: Molly Gloss. Coming this winter: Jayne Ann Krentz (Amanda Quick) and Patrick Canning. To receive my posts sign up for my On the home page, enter your email address. Thanks!
Stating the obvious. You must let go of all the little distractions that keep you from writing. That doesn’t mean you quit your day job or ignore your family.
But, for example, I woke up this morning with my new chapter rattling around in my head. I quickly made coffee (a must), fed my dogs, (a must) and came in here to get that chapter down. But here I am answering emails and writing a post for my blog. Important yes, but the latest book is more important and I have a chapter screaming to be let out.
What am I doing?….here…talking to you?
“And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.” — John Steinbeck
“It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.” — J.K. Rowling
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MY BLOG features INTERVIEWS with best-selling AUTHORS! July K.M. Ecke. August: Mega best selling author, Susan Mallery. September: Jonathan Rabb. Nov.: Joe English Coming this winter: Jayne Ann Krentz (Amanda Quick)
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Happy anniversary, ‘A Writer’s Take’ Blog. Six+ years of trying (hopefully) to find relevant and interesting topics (motivation, poetry, interviews, reviews, books, how to write a play). And then writing about them. I can’t believe I have found this much to write about.
Once or twice a week without fail! When I looked back to 2012, my first blog surprised me ….it was about lighting someone else’s candle.
I recently received this critique/note from a fellow author and fan.
“Trisha! Thank you for including me on your blog. It is one of the nicest I’ve ever been on. Often, a blog is laid out clunky or the pics don’t go with the interview. This is top notch. I have the Wolfe Pack sharing it on FB and am proud to sent it out to my readers. Great job on a great site. What a personal piece. I don’t think I’ve every had anyone go to this length to show my writing and my life as a writer like you have. Thank you so much, Trisha!! Manning Wolfe
We writers can all agree that writing is a lonely job. A comment once in a while keeps me going, helps me to write that next post. Manning reached out and
lit my candle.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Looking Back: One Candle Can Light Another…My first post May 6, 2012.
‘ A good friend called me the other day; He was reading my book of poetry, Butterflies and Bullets. He’s a very accomplished pianist and songwriter. He went on to say that while reading my work he kept hearing music in his head. And could I give him permission to use my poetry for lyrics. What a compliment! He said he was especially taken with, “Hair-cut…Two Bits”, about a down-and-out cellist, gambler and barber in New Orleans.’
MY BLOG features INTERVIEWS with best-selling AUTHORS! April: International adventurer, writer, Tal Gur. June: Manning Wolfe. July E.K. Ecke. August: Susan Mallery. Coming this winter: Jayne Ann Krentz (Amanda Quick)
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This was just tooo good not to share! As a writer, I will tell you that it’s good, no, great advice if you are involved with a writer.
Okay, all laughs aside….seriously….if you are the significant other to a writer you are one of my HEROES!! When we are writing and you try to talk to us, we are not being rude by not answering you, we don’t mean to be neglectful, we don’t mean to hurt your feelings. We simply don’t hear you.….when we are deep into the zone we aren’t even in the same room or house with you…we are in the world of our story, if we are lucky.
This, in fact, is one of the questions I ask the authors that I interview. Do you ‘get lost’ in your writing and for how long? And they have all reported back that yes they get lost in the story and in their characters.
So if you give the writer in your life some slack, bring them a cup of coffee but don’t speak, quietly close the door to their ‘writing space’ you are a true supporter to that writer.
“A blank piece of paper is God’s way of telling us how hard it to be God.”– Sidney Sheldon
“My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying.”
– Anton Chekhov
“I have been successful probably because I have always realized that I knew nothing about writing and have merely tried to tell an interesting story entertainingly.”
– Edgar Rice Burroughs
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MY BLOG features INTERVIEWS with best-selling AUTHORS! March: Mystery (and Western) writer, Larry D. Sweazy. April: International adventurer, writer, Tal Gur. June: Manning Wolfe
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Did you like this tip? See all 37 tips for writers in the book, How to Write Creatively
I have been in the writing game for thirty years. Forty-eight novels and fourteen short story collections. From my third book, most have been national bestsellers and over half were on the New York Times bestseller list. I have five RITAs, the highest award in women’s fiction from RWA as well as many other awards.
In interviews, I’m often asked what one thing I would tell a beginning writer if I got the chance. Study your markets? Read everything? Learn your craft? Write? All came up as possibilities, but one lesson kept whispering in the back of my mind. Maybe it’s not the most important tool a writer needs, but it can be vital to your success.
Learn to Fall!
There will be times, thousands of them if you stay in the game as long as I have, when this business doesn’t go your way. You have to stop holding on to the safety strap and learn to jump out into the unknown.
The first time I remember taking a tumble was before I sold. I was frantically writing, sending off to every contest, agent, and editor I could find. One day, I opened the mailbox to discover three rejections. I felt like I’d faced a firing squad and all twelve bullets hit true. I walked back to the house, sat down and started crying. My four-year-old son, Matt, came up to me, leaned on the arm of the chair and asked what was wrong. Through tears I told him about my total failure. He smiled and said simply, “Mom, like you say when I play t-ball: sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, and sometimes you get rained-out.”
I stopped crying and realized it wasn’t me. I was a good writer doing the best I could. I just kept getting rained-out by editors who didn’t read the slush pile and agents who already had full client lists.
From that day on I developed a plan for falling. Whenever I stumbled and fell flat on my face, I let go of the corpse I was dragging around trying to sell, celebrated what I’d learned from the work and moved on with my career.
I have to be honest. There for a while quite a few bodies of old manuscripts lay around the house just in case they got a second life, but it never happened. I had to learn that the next thing I wrote would be stronger than the last. I was growing, getting better, getting stronger.
My Plan for Falling:
1. Burying the corpse. I know writers who wrote a book back in the ‘90s and are determined not to go on to another until they sell their first one. They keep painting a
Available Now!
new face on the body and shoving it into a new casket. Beginning writers probably don’t want to hear that you may write your first book, or even your second or third, for practice. We need to believe that first book will make millions or we’d never go through the work of learning to write. But sometimes you have to kiss the well-traveled manuscript good-bye and bury it under the bed.
2. Celebrating. I hope all beginning writers party at each success: a contest win or even an honorable mention. A letter asking for more or a book deal. All are worth a party. But, maybe more important is the party you have when you let go of one dream and open up to another. So win or lose you finish the race. You’re a success simply because you wrote a book. You’ve won when you mail it off to an agent or editor or self-publish.
3. Moving on If what you’re doing isn’t getting you where you want to go, maybe you are on the wrong road. Take the tools and knowledge you have learned and start carving out a different work of art. Take a lane you’ve never tried. Who knows, it might be the fast lane.
You might be surprised, you might just find a place where you and your work belong. You might grow and love writing more. So, try changing genres. Move from adult fiction to young adult. Jump from historical to contemporary. Don’t try to write what everyone else is writing. Twist it a little. Change times. Change audience. Change direction.
When I turned loose and thought of myself sky diving and not falling, my world began to change. I wrote deeper. I discovered a new love of writing.
Phil Price, an accomplished playwright, once said, “I’ve often wondered why sky divers yell for joy and people who fall off cliffs scream. After all, they’re both seeing the same view. It’s only the last foot that changes.” So, I decided, whether I’m falling or sky diving through life, I might as well decide to enjoy the view.
This year my editor at HQN suggested I step into a more mainstream story and I jumped. I read her e-mail on Friday and by Monday I had an idea I was excited about. MORNINGS ON MAIN just came out April 10, and I think my fans will follow me into this shift as they have for the past 30 years.
And if they don’t? Then I’ll stand up, dust myself off and get back in the game. Because I’m a writer, that’s what I do, I write.
On Sale September 25, 2018
Mark Twain once said that compared to writing, horseracing is a stable occupation. Maybe he was right, but the gamble is worth the try. When we’re all done and sitting around the home which would you rather say, ‘I played as hard and fast as I could,’ or ‘I never ran into the game because I was afraid of falling.’
The winners are not the ones who grab the prize. The winners are the ones who play the game, rainy days and all.
TS. Thanks, Jodi, for these words of wisdom and comfort!
Jodi Thomas
www.jodithomas.com
www.facebook.com/JodiThomasAuthor ;
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MY features INTERVIEWS with best-selling AUTHORS! Did you miss the past few months? March: Mystery (and Western) writer, Larry D. Sweazy. April: World Traveler, Tal Gur. June: mystery author, Manning Wolfe. Check out more Motivational Moments…for Writers!
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Cure writer’s block INSTANTLY! With one simple idea: Give yourself permission to write GARBAGE. You probably won’t actually write garbage but by giving yourself permission, you remove the block. What is writer’s block? It is the need for perfection..the need to avoid looking stupid. If you can’t write well you won’t write at all. Here’s an exercise:
Open your file; what you are working on.
Think about what you wish you could write if you weren’t blocked.
Set a timer for three minutes.
Now write garbage!
Write as much as you can in three minutes.That’s it! The block is gone because you gave yourself permission to write garbage. But you might say: ‘I don’t want to write garbage, I want to write quality.’
A little voice in your head is saying, ‘this is awful, stop! You look foolish.’ That is the block talking. The critic’s voice. The critic’s voice is a good thing but it is jumping in before it’s time; it’s judging your writing before it is even created. That’s writer’s block.
“It is perfectly okay to write garbage–as long as you edit brilliantly.” C.J. Cherryh
“Prose is architecture, not interior decoration.” — Ernest Hemingway
MY BLOG features INTERVIEWS with best-selling AUTHORS! Did you miss the past few months? March: Mystery (and Western) writer, Larry D. Sweazy. April: International adventurer, writer, Tal Gur.
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You don’t feel like working on your novel today. Don’t force it! If you have an unfinished novel, play, or story…you don’t have to necessarily work on it every day. Too much pressure! A successful writer DOES try to write every day but you can write anything. Maybe you’re not in a creative mood today to work on your novel. So write on your blog or write a piece of poetry. Or a short story. Whatever it is, you don’t have to finish it TODAY. Just write! Write every day! Write something!
“Remember these stories, Tlaga. My people live inside them. When a tale is told, everyone who ever heard that story is alive again….” Bartle Bull
“An alphabet makes the words that keep a people together….” Bartle Bull
“If you stumble, make it part of the dance.” ~ Abi Eberman
MY BLOG features INTERVIEWS with best-selling AUTHORS! March: Mystery (and Western) writer, Larry D. Sweazy. April: International adventurer, writer, Tal Gur.To receive my posts sign up for my On the home page, enter your email address. Thanks!
What is a cultural imperative? ‘Peoples living within the encompasses of cultures associated with very different ethnicities often imbue radically different moral imperatives, through identification processes carrying across generations. Such cultural imperatives prevalent within one culture may not have any direct equivalent within another culture…’ *
Glaring examples of this are the ethnic groups who, putting themselves at risk for censor or abuse, have insisted on keeping their native language, rituals, and religions alive. ‘one culture may not have any direct equivalent within another culture…’ But the one imperative that has crossed all ethnic and cultural groups is storytelling.
What is this imperative that most people feel….totell stories? It seems, to me, to be hardwired into our DNA.
We begin at an early age: making up stories (to ourselves) as we play with our dolls or cars. A child has no inhibitions when it comes to weaving a fantastical tale, frequently out loud, as they play.
A mother or father sits at their child’s bedside and makes up stories until they fall asleep.
A comic book writer tells his stories with a few words, facial expressions, and action illustrations.
A poet tells their stories through rhyme, lyric or free verse.
A playwright creates their story so that others can tell it.
Another storyteller sees their stories happening in the far future.
Another goes to the dark side of human nature and writes stories about things that go bump in the night.
A teacher tells a story to enhance the lesson. (I miss you, Miss. O’Connor.)
The novelist weaves a longer tale; taking their characters on adventures, discovering love, suffering defeats, and usually conquering all in the end.
……even gossip could be considered storytelling.
I have worried out loud (and written about it here) that storytelling will die, be a thing of the past. But now I believe that many of us do have that cultural imperative to tell and write down our stories. After all the synonyms for imperative are: involuntary, necessary, nonelective, obligatory, peremptory, required. I don’t think storytellers can help themselves. We have to tell stories!
MY BLOG features INTERVIEWS with best-selling AUTHORS! Did you miss the past few months? January: Sue Grafton ~ In Memory March: Mystery (and Western) writer, Larry D. Sweazy. April: in60Learning ~ A unique, non-fiction mini-book read in 60 minutes. Check out more Motivational Moments…for Writers!
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A good writer knows what repetitive words he or she uses unconsciously. A few years ago I published a novel. This week I had an opportunity to send it to a traditional publisher of some repute. I thought: ‘I want the manuscript to be as close to perfect as I can make it, so I’ll take another look at it’. Knowing my go-to words are ‘that’ and ‘just‘, the first thing I did was find out how many times I’d used the word ‘that’. 807!! With editing, I happily reduced that number to 197.
How does that happen?? Well, we all have idiosyncrasies with our language. Yes, I had an editor and she missed it too. Then I checked the other devil word, ‘just‘. 234 times when only 5-6 were used appropriately. Yikes!
Be self-aware as a writer. Know your strengths, yes, but also your weaknesses. Know your eccentricities with language.
“The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity.”~~ Walt Whitman
“Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality.
But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.“~~ T. S. Eliot
MY BLOG features INTERVIEWS with best-selling AUTHORS! Did you miss the past few months? December: British writer, J.G. Dow. January: Sue Grafton ~ In Memory
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Be certain you tie up all your loose ends. I am writing another true crime mystery. I was knee-deep in blood in the lobby and elevator car of my detectives’ latest case. The tiny dog had survived the barrage of bullets but his owner did not. Bodies are loaded up for transport to the ME’s morgue, CSI is working the scene and….okay…what do I do with the dog? 
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To Purchase
This was just tooo good not to share! As a writer, I will tell you that it’s good, no, great advice if you are involved with a writer.
