Hoarfrost

Today Mother Nature is decorating for Christmas here in northern Minnesota. Everything is covered in a layer of hoarfrost. It is Mother Nature’s flocking. Even the power lines are encased in pure white crystals. It is a beautiful world this morning.

Winter writing

I love to write in the winter. Here in northern Minnesota I can look out at the world of white and the weak winter sun. To someone who has never seen the weak winter sun, it can be hard to explain. It seems very bright against the white snow, but there is no warmth in the sunlight as in summer. It seems a time of peace and rest – Oh, and of  course writing.

During the holiday season I am a little conflicted. I would like to listen to Christmas music, but I learned long ago I cannot write and listen to music at the same time. I think the reason is I have to concentrate on either one or the other. If I listen to the music, I cannot write. If I write, I literally cannot hear the music. I guess I suffer from a one track mind – grin.

Writing versus marketing

A comment by a friend got me to thinking. He said that it appears you spend more time marketing your work then you do creating it. My immediate reaction was telling him it was not true, but then I got to thinking about what he had said. I have a tracking program left over from my days working as a consultant. The results are interesting and I will not bore you with the list of hours and other small detail. It turns out my friend was almost correct. However, I need to back up here and tell you what I considered marketing efforts to be. This blog is a marketing effort. It is almost demanded in today’s world that you have one. My website is obviously another marketing effort. The other major time-consuming effort in marketing is keeping up with my email about my novels and writing questions. I only considered time actually spent either in writing or marketing writing and not time spent with my family or other normal day to day to day routine items. The breakdown between writing and marketing splits in round numbers to 51% to writing and 49% to marketing. It was a surprise to me. After thinking about the results, I have come to realize that an individual writer has no other choice to spend time marketing. A mainstream author has a house with a publicity and marketing group to do that work. Any thoughts?

Thanksgiving

I would like to wish you and your family a happy and safe Thanksgiving.

Trigger events

People rarely make great changes in their lives unless triggered by some event. It can be happy such as getting married or the birth of a child. It can be a sad or hurtful event such as the death of someone close to you or having a serious accident. Think of events that have triggered changes in your life. Without that event occurring, would you have made those changes?

The same is true of characters in a novel. Events in their lives trigger changes which in the case of a novel drives the storyline. Think of your favorite novel and think of how the storyline was driven by changes.

The work of writing

I have been asked how I go about doing the actual writing of the novel. Do I know when I sit down in front of the computer but I will be working on? The answer is yes. I never finish all I know about a scene or bit of action the day before. It gives me a quick starting point. I realize that is not entirely true. Sometimes I will finish is scene, but I know what the next scene will be and leave it until the next day. It seems I only have so much I can do in one day. It varies from as little as 250 words to sometimes as much as 1000 words per day. I find I am most creative in the morning. In the afternoon, I switched into the editor mode and go over material that is a few days old. If I tried to edit material that is too fresh, I find I do not do a good job. It would never pay to try to edit the morning’s writing on the same day. There were some other questions that I will share another day.