Fall has Arrived, Can You Believe It?

I have been thinking this morning, reflecting if you will, on the fun, family bonding I had this summer. With my grand kids from Texas and my original two grand kids that live with me full time, let's just say there wasn't much time to sit and reflect.

But now that fall has arrived, school has begun, and the weather has calmed (I love not having to run the air conditioner all day) my thoughts have drifted to Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas.

There is always so much to do that I'm afraid the reflection I am experiencing now will very short winded. I'm going to try and not let it.

My new book is out, and although there is some promotion that always needs to be done, I find that opening up my days for the holidays always brings in more material for later than I can ever hope to record. At least not all of it.

So, just for now, I'm going to watch the leaves change, the air grow quieter, and my hopes and dreams of family and all the holidays represent, fill me.

Balancing Dialogue with Setting and Reflection

I received a phone call from a writer this morning. She wanted to know if writing a page and a half of material without dialogue was okay. I assured her that it was.



Photo by: veni  markovski, courtesy of Flickr

There is a place for setting. A place for back story. A place to sum up without spelling out every nuance in a conversation. Because, as usual, your story must move forward.

So when do you know when to write dialogue and when to leave it out?

Only you can answer that question. And your readers, of course. And we're talking here about the readers you get before you put your book out there to the world. They may tell you that:

• Your story drags too much. You need more dialogue. 
• There is confusion. The story jumps too much from setting to setting and the reader is having a difficult time understanding where they are.
• You write too much dialogue and not enough setting.
• Reflection time takes over the story and is always swimming in a circle but never taking the character anywhere.  

Photo by: LaurenFinkelPhotography, courtesy of Flickr

Writing dialogue is a bit like real life situations. In fact, the best dialogue takes a back seat to the dialogue you use in real life and the power it gives you personally to move on. Dialogue peppered with some reflection time and the use of setting intertwined makes for a great balance in your book. As in book reading, balance is also wanted in life (even if we don't get it).

Because dialogue moves the reader along faster in your story than any other writing medium, you want to make sure you use it; but you also want to give the reader pause for reflection, time to take in their immediate surroundings. There's nothing worse than having your characters standing within an empty void. Your readers want to see where they are; breathe in the air if you will. They want to be a part of the story.

We all have writing areas we are stronger at. Mine happens to be dialogue. I struggle with setting and find that when I return to a book I often have to add a bit more. You may do the same with dialogue.

The good news is that in book writing, a writer can go back and re-do what was said or felt or seen--something not usually possible in real life.

And maybe that's the best news.

Writing by Hand

In this day of ever-changing technology, it's easy to get caught up on the computer and all that this instrument has to offer. I'm on it right now, writing this to you, and you're right there a moment or an hour or a day later, reading what I've written.

Photo by RoboGenius, courtesy of Flickr

But today, after reading this blog, I'd like you to stop and take a few moments to reflect on what writing really means to you. And then I want you to get a pen and a piece of paper (or your journal) and write down your thoughts. You may want to answer these questions.

1, Why are you a writer?
2. Why do you think you chose the particular genre you did?
3. Have you been published? If so, what was it and what brought you the most happiness? Was it the writing itself? Was it the publishing? A combination of both? If you've never been published, how long have you been writing? Set a date now to have your first piece of writing published. Decide what it will be and place it on your calendar. 

You may even want to put together a vision board. Vision boards have your goals on them as well as pictures to compliment your goals and dates of completion. There's something about putting your goals on paper and hanging them where you see them the most often, that brings a goal to fruition. Once the goal is achieved, take off the picture, the words you've created and put them in your journal to remind yourself of
what was accomplished.
  

Photo by Dawn, courtesy of Flickr

We, as writers, need to stick together, and that means that sometimes we need to step off the fast track of the Internet, and take a slower pace by writing everything down by hand.

Can't you just smell that new fine tipped marker?

Reflection and Writing

Do you often pause and reflect about your writing life? Where you are and where you'd like to be?

It came to me a few weeks ago, that some of my writing dreams have finally become a reality, and I find myself wondering how it all happened.

You know why patience is a virtue? It's because so many of us lack it. What we want is for our writing, no matter what it is, to be published NOW. It's the waiting that stinks.

But what if we have it all wrong? I waited 8 years after writing every day, to get my first work published. It was a short snip-it, hardly an article. And in the beginning I wrote the short stuff. The short article. The short poem. The short children's story.

Photo by Kevin Lawver, courtesy of Flickr

Reflecting on my "short" start, I realize that these shorts prepared me for the "longs." Later, I published one book and then two, and then three. And after all of that, I wanted to begin my own publishing company. And so Idea Creations Press was born.

Photo by: striatic, courtesy of Flickr

I always wanted to publish books for other people, but it seemed more like a pipe dream than anything else. But I believe all the "shorts" and "longs" have prepared me for the next step. I couldn't have published a book in the beginning without first gaining the skills and determination to do so. And now that I have the skills and determination to publish I see a window opening with even more to learn.

And that's what reflection is all about.