Meandering On Monday with Janet Lane Walters

Meander 1 I'm a writer and a reader. Lately, I've learned something I probably knew but never thought of. When I'm writing the rough draft of a story, between scenes, I read a chapter of whatever book is in my current reading list. I've discovered something very interesting. If the book I'm reading is good to great, my progress on the rough draft goes smoother, but if I've chosen a  book that makes me cringe to read, my rough draft stalls. There are writers who don't read when they're writing. For me, the genre I'm writing and the one I'm reading seldom match. It's not that the good book influences my style, my choice of scenes or anything. Good writing spurs me on to make my writing better. Not sure this happens for anyone else but me.

Meander 2 This is about sharing. I belong to several tribes and I'm perhaps a bit obsessed about sharing other people's blogs. There's a new thing on Triberr that shows how many of your blogs a person in one of your tribes has shared. There are people who share the way I do, but there are also the people who don't share mine or even anyone. I've started sharing posts for the non-sharers as seldom as I can. Now there are some blogs I won't share nude men, nude women and those who have never shared my blogs. I will share these a few times and after that I clear the stream. Sorry about that but I believe in sharing and I do. Not sure how anyone feels about this and maybe my blogs aren't ones others want to share. So send me a message. Took me a long time to accept sharing is a mutual thing.

Meander 3 Now to the Writing. Read the first scene of a story from the rough draft. I'm not sure some of the people get the idea of rough draft. They may be the kind of writers who struggle with each sentence and can't move on until they have perfected that sentence. That's not the way I write. I never know about the twists and turns until I reach the end and some things that happen in the last few chapters become important. So I do another draft and the story takes form. I'll continue to read these rough drafts in critique. Otherwise I wouldn't be able to read anything for weeks or even months at a time. A critique group is a place where the writer needs to know if they've gone off base or if people want more of something. It's not a place for people to re-write the story. One can say I want to hear more. This isn't clear. Not a place to say You should do it this way. That's not the way I see things. Now your story.  Actually what I read has many changes and if I get it typed, I'll read it again and show people the story isn't really going in the direction they want but in mine. Actually I think it's going great.