Category: Uncategorized

I’ll admit that I took a couple of months off this past summer. Our house was on the market (unsuccessfully, I might add! Obviously, the housing market is less than ideal right now). I had strangers tromping through at (literally) a moment’s notice. Lots of, “Okay! Let’s throw those Barbies in the toy chest and go to the park!!” at the drop of a hat. Add in the vacations and family visits and it really wasn’t a conducive time to do a lot of writing.

But I discovered something. If you don’t write nearly every day, writing doesn’t come as easily to you when you come back to it. It’s sort of like an underused muscle.

Now I’m in the middle of doing revisions for the book coming out next year (for a new publisher) and working on the new book in the series. I’m starting to get my groove back, but it took a couple of weeks of pure work. Even if I felt like my writing wasn’t up to par, my ideas were out on paper and I knew I could go back later and edit them into something much better.

Now some writers might find reading industry blogs a real distraction. I’ll admit that it’s tempting to surf the net instead of slugging out your daily pages. But if you subscribe to the blogs’ feeds, you can just read them when they’re updated. And so many of them have great information. There are lots of great websites for writers. Here is a cool site that I’ve enjoyed lately: http://queryshark.blogspot.com/ —You’ll feel good about the query letters you’ve sent in! I like to edit these queries as I read them, which probably places me in the “disturbed” category.

An interesting idea that might appeal to many writers: organizing your writing with a wiki. This might sound a little scary, but you can make wikis that aren’t shared out–that are private to your computer. Here’s a blog article on creating a writing wiki: http://writerunboxed.com/2008/08/28/organize-your-novel-with-a-wiki/ If you’ve used a wiki for writing or if you give it a try, let me know how it goes! There are definitely parts to this that sound interesting to me if I find time to set it up.

Today was one of those days where I couldn’t even sit down unless I was in the driver’s seat of my minivan.  Plus, it was like the Fates were throwing every wacky curve ball they could think of at me.  I had a car that had to go to the shop, 2 sets of carpools to drive and a husband to get to work, yardwork to do before a tropical storm arrived in town, and a doctor’s appointment for my son.  Many of these things were not on my list of things to do today.

So today I had my tiny, spiral notebook with me.  I knew I wasn’t going to be able to write much, or even coherently, today.  But I could still get some snapshots of people, situations, and names.  I could mull through my plot at stoplights and think about how the story was going to play out.  And I could think of ideas to relieve the tedium of traffic, doctors’ offices, and car repair shops. I even did some jotting down while waiting for the doctor (my son worked on his homework.)  So the day didn’t go exactly as planned, but I did manage to get something accomplished.  And maybe Monday won’t be the same way.

Cool website for mystery writers: http://mysteriousmatters.typepad.com/mysterious_matters_myster/   An interesting site for anyone interested in writing mysteries.

I love reading mysteries.  That’s the whole reason I chose the genre to write for.  But when I’m writing a book, I try not to read books that are similar to my own.  In other words, I try to avoid humorous cozy mysteries. 

The reasons I do this are two-fold.  First,  on some level, I’m worried about getting too much influence from a book similar to my own.  But mostly, I’m worried that reading another author’s published book will make me more frustrated with my own.  What I’m reading is a well-polished, darned-near-perfect finished product, but I can’t help but compare it to my own, imperfect, scratched-up and scribbled over Work in Progress. 

So lately I’ve read some wonderful mysteries, but they’ve been nothing like my own.  I read Deborah Crombie’s latest police procedural (Where Memories Lie) and a couple of books with mysterious elements to them that weren’t traditional mysteries (House at Riverton and The Secret History). These books were so different from mine in every way that I was able to read them for relaxation and pure enjoyment instead of comparing my manuscript to them and feeling like I’m falling short. 

Is it tough for you to stay focused?  Ever find that, despite your best intentions, you start flirting with another project?  It’s the lure of the forbidden:  you’re actually supposed to be working on your mystery series.  But then you get this great idea for a children’s book.  In the middle of the night, no less.  You even sketch out some dialogue and the tone of the book, and…

Just say no! This happened to me a couple of nights ago and it was soooo tempting to start working on something new and different.  It always seems like the new love will be easier to work with, more fun-loving, cuter.  Isn’t the grass always greener on the other side of the fence?

I decided to type out my sketchy idea on a Word doc and save it to the file “New Book Ideas.” That way I haven’t forgotten the idea and I can explore it later.  Because starting another project is just as much a form of distraction as messing around on the computer or watching TV is. 

Sometimes when you’re a mom, your life just gets incredibly busy and crazy.  Occasionally you can guess when this madness will descend, and others it just bites you in the rear end.  This week was a little of both.

I had kids over for end-of-summer playdates several days.  My own children were unexpectedly attention-craving, we had my daughter’s birthday party to plan and execute, Brownie Scouts had a pool party….argh!  Basically, any plans I made were quickly morphed into something else.  Did I mention that both my dryer and my air conditioner needed repairman?

I did manage to write during this craziness, but I was catching my moments when I could: in the middle of the night, waking up with insomnia; while my kids were in the pool and I was at poolside; in the car at stoplights.  Was it exactly the quality writing time I wanted?  No.  But I felt better when I did it and it quickly added up, too. 

School starts back next week and with any luck I can get back into more of a rhythm.