My weekend was split with work.  I had Saturday off, worked Sunday, had today off and now tomorrow off so this has been enjoyable. First time with two days off in a row for a while and believe me, I was ready.  Got up this morning, put on a pot of coffee, made a batch [...]

Today was last day of class, got to set up my desk for Monday and it was like Christmas.  New PC, new phone, new everything, now to be able to actually do it. Will probably hold off on decorating my cubicle because they already said they are moving our department to the other end of the [...]

  Now that you’ve come up with a story idea and have had some time to play around with it, the next step is to determine your audience.  Who would read this kind of story?  Here are some of your choices: Literary isn’t really a genre but from everything I’ve read, no one has really [...]

In response to a reader’s question, I came up with the idea for this post.  I do read a lot, both fiction and non-fiction.  The non-fiction books I gravitate to are usually about the writing process.  This was one of those questions I felt needed to be answered by someone who had been there.  The question [...]

“Plot is characters under stress.”  — Henry James, The Art of Fiction.   As you can tell from my recent posts, I have had my share of stress recently but that is all getting better.   I had a wonderful weekend.  I spent Saturday with the Iowa Romance Novelists for our monthly meeting.  Our program [...]

“Life is like an ever-shifting kaleidoscope–a slight change, and all patterns alter.”     Sharon Salzberg I have had a slight change in my life this past week with my decision to give up my career as a Realtor.  It was a very difficult decision for me to make because I really felt I was a good [...]

P.O.V. – Step Eight – Write a Novel with Me   As I developed the story and characters for this project, I had made a decision to try writing in the first person point of view.  I was so excited to start writing that I automatically wrote the first chapter in third person.  I realized [...]

Since my last post, I have been trying to decide who my villain was so that I could develop him/her.  It has been difficult because I had no clue as to his/her identity.  All I knew was what I wanted my villain to do. So in the process I lost a victim and gained a [...]

If you have been following my blog, you know that the past few days, I’ve been working on secondary characters, specifically victims, because I am writing a mystery.  The how-to book I am using, suggested that my story have three crimes with three victims, haven’t quite got there yet.  I have two crimes and two [...]

By blogging about this topic, I do not intend to teach anyone how to write a novel.  There are plenty of classes, by qualified teachers, you can attend and of course, you can read every single book about writing a novel you can get your hands on, like me.  I am following a book on [...]