If you’ve seen the television talent show “So You Think You Can Dance”, you have a pretty good idea of what being an author is like.
With writing (as with dancing), a very simplified version of the process usually works like this: you THINK you have talent and then you PRACTICE your craft until you ACHIEVE a level of security about your abilities. At that point you BROADCAST your body of work, ANTICIPATE the world’s reaction and CROSS YOUR FINGERS.
Of course, there’s a lot of “stuff” that occurs in between these stages, but in essence, these are the points in time that can make the difference between a successful attempt at writing and a “less than successful” attempt. BTW, when it comes to writing, there’s no such thing as a “failed” attempt :)
While promoting my most recent novel “One Last Lie”, many book review bloggers asked me to complete a “virtual” interview – questions and answers that they’d post on their blog while they reviewed, discussed, praised (or ripped apart) my book. Most of the interviews surprised me as I had no idea that an audience would be interested in my response to questions like: “Do you go through any rituals before sitting down to write?”, “Do you need a drink before or after writing a chapter?” or “Have you ever hit the computer screen due to writer’s block?”
When I queried the interviewees as to the reasoning behind these questions, the typical response was: although most of the people who read their blogs are avid readers, many of them would also like to be authors. Their need to know more about the secretive and habitual aspects of a writer’s life made it obvious that they hungered for personal information that they themselves could use in order to have their own successful writing careers.
And so this blog… my chance to share some of the secrets that have enabled me to complete two novels (by itself a big feat), make it to the quarter finals of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards and get 4 and 5 star reviews on Goodreads, Amazon and other sites all across the Internet. And it’s your chance to share your own secrets – and frustrations – that have become a part of your writing process, or just a part of your desire to become a writer.
So you think you can WRITE? Stay tuned to my next posting for the first part of the answer to that question…
