The answer for my current WIP is NOT to prologue.
If you've been following me on Facebook you'll know I've been agonizing over how best to present my main characters' backstory without clogging up the narrative flow. I finally decided on a prologue.
At first it seemed like a good solution. Then it didn't. And I felt like I'd just wasted a few days writing something I couldn't use.
I was wrong!
What hammering out a prologue DID do for me was to give me a very clear, dramatic view of "what...
Sometimes people say to me that they wish they had my faith, kind of as if it were something I could hand over to them, like a sweater or a book. And I really wish I could do that!
But my faith isn't something I just accepted at face value and went on my merry way. It is something I have worked at, something that never stops challenging me and that I've learned from long experience is the only thing worth having.
Honestly, when I had my conversion experience at age 21 I was shocked, dismayed...
I've been off for a bit because -- yay!!! -- my second book has been accepted and I need to integrate editor suggestions. It won't be out until next Christmas but I need to get it ready long before that.
At the same time I'm still battling this Lyme disease relapse. Trust me, that makes things a lot harder because I wear out so quickly. But bit by bit I'm making progress.
Getting revisions can be daunting, as suddenly someone else's ideas need to be integrated into your story. You need to find...
A veritable tsunami of Lyme symptoms has been trying to drag me under. I'm doing my best to fight the good fight but I'm at the stage where it actually hurts to wear clothes (known as "allodynia")! The alternative doesn't appeal so I just wear the loosest-fitting things I can find.
But hurray, my brain still works! I'm making good notes on my current WIP, which is growing closer and closer to my heart. I'm also catching up on my reading. And I spend time in the morning and evening reading from...
... although lately things have been rough. I try to make the best of it but at times the pain, fatigue and just plain stupid get the better of me.
Today's not great. I need that to be okay, and not feel like I somehow have to "fix" it. My internal monolog tends to be "come on, get up off your lazy bum and write something!" If you have a chronic illness you know that doesn't work. It just adds more frustration and depression to an already non-wonderful situation.
Why can't I just "be"? Even...
I realize my last post was more than a little incoherent. Why? Because I was forcing myself to write in the blog when my heart wasn't in it... and when I didn't feel God's prompting.
Today I put in a long writing session and feel that writing more would be a mistake. It's exciting to "go deeper" with the characters and see how they interact. I'm still in the process of learning about these people but every day they give me more to work with.
I'm at the point where their pain becomes mine, in a...
Sometimes stress kicks in and I feel like I HAVE to do a million things if I want to get my writing career on track.
Sometimes I go with that feeling and let the stress poison my system. There's nothing like stress to kick off a big Lyme/fibromyalgia flare. And that's when I remember... nothing is life-or-death.
If I don't get that synopsis written today, if I haven't fixed chapters to reflect new changes... really, so what? I'll do it as soon as I'm not crippled with pain.
Obviously, sometimes...
When I finally turned back to writing after 20+ years in a demanding career, I prayed that God would show me where he wanted me.
A Love Inspired blitz popped up and I submitted a synopsis and three chapters. Shortly after that I was asked to submit a full manuscript. After several revisions my book was accepted for publication. I took that as a sign that God wanted me to write Christian fiction!
Recently a Christian literary agent came to my attention and I queried her. Again, I prayed for God...
"One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!” -- John 9:25b
Despite a fairly dramatic conversion experience, I fought God for a long time. In my family any sort of faith is considered stupid. Then, years after He called me, He healed me of a mental illness and depression that dominated my life well into my thirties.
It was literally an overnight change. One day I self-harming and lost; the next day it was as if a light had gone on inside me. I'd been seeing a psychologist and he was amazed...
When I work on a story, I often have to check myself to make sure I'm being true to my goals as an author.
My overriding goal is that readers will find faith-full encouragement or consolation that they can apply to their lives. This sounds very lofty, but I've found that just a word or a quote from Scripture can touch people deeply.
One reviewer of His Neighbor's Secret quoted Enid Mullin, the pastor's wife: "He's always with us, child... We turn our backs on Him at times, but He never turns...
When I was a child I wrote stories out of sheer love. Filling endless notebooks with my ideas was my absolute favorite thing in the world, and how I spent my time when I wasn't reading.
What happened? How did I manage to turn such a joyful activity into an exhausting slog?
Sometimes I have to turn myself around and go back to being the child who loved nothing better than writing.
Today I'm writing in a notebook instead of on the laptop (although my handwriting is nearly illegible). So far it's...
Taking a few days of sick leave seems to have cleared my head. I was getting WAY too in-the-weeds with my current book. Backing off has shown me why I was stuck in an endless loop, and when I start work again on Monday I know what I need to do.
The break has also reminded me that FAITH comes first, then health, then writing. If I'm not paying attention to God's prompting I get hopelessly lost. When I realign my priorities and spend time in prayer and reading, everything falls back into place.
A...
This is a hard one for me, being a driven person who constantly feels the need to be "doing something" -- but the truth is, sometimes you need to give yourself a break.
If you're like me, the characters and plots in your head can wear you out. If you're an insomniac they can seem like a pleasant distraction until you start to crumble. That kind of stress is not good for anyone. With a chronic illness like late-stage Lyme disease, not being able to rest/sleep is a HUGE trigger for setting off a...
Pain and migraine kept me from sleeping, but also from reading, writing, watching TV, doing just about anything other than lie there. I let myself become distracted with worry and despair. What if I never feel better again? What if the Lyme leads to something worse? How can I prevent becoming a burden to my husband?
Eventually I thought: Imagine feeling like this and having nowhere to live, no medications to ease the pain., no one at all to care for you.
At times like these it's so important to...
Maybe not... but that's precisely what I did this morning.
I was bound and determined to finish the chapter I'm currently working on. I set a Word Count Goal and by jingo I achieved it... despite the fact that I was pretty much sliding down in my seat from exhaustion and barely able to see the screen by the time I was done.
Was it smart to push myself like that? Probably not. Was it even good writing? Very definitely not! But to my mind it makes sense to get words on the page--because you KNOW...
I had a really good handle on the whole shape of my current Work-In-Progress. I had outlined the whole thing and broken it down into chapters.
In the digital version, that is.
Then the Great Lyme Flare crashed down on me and the only writing I could do for a while was in my head, with scribbled notes here and there. When I came back to my wonderful, complete outline, I discovered just how much I had change in my head and not on the page.
So now I'm digging myself out from under a pile of...
When I'm developing a story, I spend long periods in my head improvising dialogue and scenes. This is especially true when I'm too sick to sit up with the laptop.
Sometimes the characters come into my brain and "take over." This is common phenomenon for writers, when their characters seem to take on a life of their own and your job is to watch and take notes. Other times I push them around and see how they react. This is often how I stumble across breakthroughs or important background...
I'm blessed in that with my particular illness (chronic late-stage Lyme disease) I still somehow have good days. Yesterday I woke up with no significant pain, good energy and--somewhat unfortunately--a crazy urge to DO STUFF while I could!
So I got on the elliptical (I'm pretty slow but at least it's something), made a salad, baked a quiche, and did some work on my WIP. By 5:30 PM I was exhausted and ready to go to bed, but I forced myself to stay up until (gasp) 6:30! Then it was Off to...
I hope to encourage writers who struggle to write because of an underlying condition.
Because that's what I am.
Most days I have to fight against physical pain, headaches and brain fog just to function at the most basic level. Some days I lose. But if I can do even one small thing to keep my writer life moving forward, I count that as an accomplishment.
My brain never stops writing, coming up with stories and characters or developing ones that I'm actively working on. I can't always get these...