Meandering On Monday with Janet Lane Walters #MFRWauthor #amwriting

Meander 1 - I'm celebrating my years as a writer. This is around the time of the year when I sold my first short story. The year was 1968 and I'd been writing stories for about two years. I remember the day. Hard to believe 47 years have passed but the memory remains clear. The mail came and I saw the SASE envelope and really didn't want to open it but this time the envelope was thinner than when I'd sent it out. So I sat in my study and opened the envelope and saw an acceptance letter and a check. Suddenly I was an author and I wanted to share the news. My boys were three and two so they couldn't appreciate the news. My husband was at the hospital doing his residency. I had a number for him there so I called. Unfortunately he was in a session so the secretary took the message. "Tell him I sold one of my children." We had laughed and talked about the boys as our children and my stories as my children. An hour later I got a frantic call from my husband. The secretary told him I'd sold one of his children. After I explained what had happened we both laughed over the error. That was the beginning of my career. Not that it was smooth sailing. There were more rejections and I turned to novels. I also took a break or two to return to school and work as a nurse.

Meander 2 - Something has been happening with my blog and I'm not sure what but it's kind of exciting. In the past few weeks I've had 600 to 1200 visits a day. Is it because I've been doing this for a long time or is it the subjects I write about. A lot of them are concerned with writing in general, my books and also the books of others. It's fun while it lasts.

Meander 3 - My writing. The past week I've been doing the final edits before I send the manuscript for Divided Dreams to the publisher. This is in some ways tedious but there are important things to consider like why doesn't this sentence make any sense? Often it's because when typing I leave out a word or two. Another is can I make this crisper. How many passive sentences are there. My spell check usually tells me how passive the story it. I try to hit less than 3% and this time I've been successful with this. There are three chapters to go and then some other stuff to accomplish before I send it out. Then I'm going to concentrate on Wizards of Fyre which has been rough drafted. The version only a writer can love.