Meandering on Monday with Janet Lane Walters #BWLAuthor #MFRWAuthor #Reading #Writing #Thoughts - Patience

 Meander 1 - Reading - A mixed bag last week on the reading schedule. Read several Andre Norton Witch World stories. Haven't read them for ages so this was a nice exciting adventures to read. Read Burnt Evidence by Dean L. Hovey - As usual a great mystery with some twists and some great bits of humor. Have started a new book but more about that next week.

Meander 2 - Thoughts - Patience - I've decided I have little patience for waiting when there are things that will be held up waiting for a phone call to disrupt my day. Three calls in a row and not the one I wanted. Two hours later and I'm still waiting. Strange how I have patience when writing and doing amny things but never when I know I must go somewhere but don't know when. Strange about the difference but it's there. I am impatiently trying to be patient.

Meander 3 - Writing - Am busily typing in the many corrections to Haunted Dreams. 8 chapters to go and that will happen. I've begun the work in Incal that will be the fourth in the Moon Rising Series. A different kind of story but not really too different. Six focus characters but this time I'm clustering them so far as the three women and the three men with alternating chapters. It's interesting but fun to write this way. I do really like ensemble stories.

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Tuesday's Inspiration - More Tidbits on The Writer's Mind

Do you have both a shameless playfulness and earnestness that can be embarrassing. Both are found in the writer's mind. Don't know about you but sometimes lines occur when I'm writing and become part of the story that are sort of twisted but funny. Rather irreverent remarks the characters say that you never would in conversation.

Another quality a writer's mind can display is patience. The kind of patience as you would find when a cat sits for hours and watches waiting to pounce. Spending time waiting for the right expression. I know I've sat with pen in hand thinking and thinking and suddenly the right words form and they move across the page. This I find hard to do on the computer but sitting in my recliner I can spend this thoughtful time until I pounce.

This one is one I cultivate and that's a criminal streak of cunning. Very necessary if one writes mysteries and suspense but also useful in other genres of fiction.  How to take the same old story and make it new takes this kind of cunning. Have you ever been reading another writer's work and thought to yourself, "that's not the wy things should work." then your writer's mind takes and twists that idea and makes it your own. Of course there is danger in this but the cunning mind will find a way to make that idea yours.

Tuesday's Inspiration - words by B. J. Chute

When I read the essay by B. J. Chute, I came across interesting ideas. The essay was titled What Makes A Fiction Writer. That's something I've been thinking about for years. I sort of feel I write fiction since writing non-fiction often hurts my head. So here is what was said.

"There are four qualities without which one cannot write fiction at all." What are the qualities B. J. Chute thinks are vital to becoming a writer of fiction?

Imagination is the first. Without being to imagine a character or set of characters interacting in a situation all one would be left with boring lists and details. Imagination is what carries the writer into a new and different world or a new slant on the present one.

Empathy is the second. Empathy is the ability to walk in another person's shoes. Empathy goes beyond sympathy. Using this quality allows the writer of fiction to step beyond the facts and enter the character or character's world and bring the reader along for the journey.

Style is the third. I'll have to admit this puzzled me for a time. Here style is said to be the way the story is expressed. Perhaps this is the same thing as voice and tone put together.

Patience is the fourth, Lord knows, a writer needs gallons of patience. There is patience when writing and putting words on the paper hoping to find the right way of expression. There is also patience after sending the story into the world of waiting to hear from an editor or an agent. There is also the need for patience to see the story take form in the electronic or paper version.  I would rate patience next to imagination.

Wednesday's Writer's Tip - Orson Scott Card - How To Write Science Fiction and Fantasy

Today I'll finish up the advice from Orson Scott Card. What he says in this book applies to writers in all areas of genre fiction. What he ended the book was advice or almost lecturing in areas of a writer's life. I won't mention them all but if you want them all, find a copy of the book.

Of the 7 areas he gives advice Discipline heads the list. This is something I know very much about. Being disciplined as one strives for a career in writing fiction is a must. One can't wait for the muse to strike. Writing every day even when you do feel like writing is a must. I'll share a bit here. Writing can be an escape and for me it was. Almost 20 years ago, my husband was having major surgery. He had an aortic anuyerism at the point where the aorta leaves the heart. The doctor told me the surgery had a 50/ chance of success. The procedure took many hours. I'd brought a clipboard and the mss I was currently working on to the hospital with me. Writing during that stressful time allowed me not to think about what could or not go wrong. When I looked at what I'd written after that time, most of it was great. Would those words have been as intense if I'd not grabbed discipline and worked. I don't know.

Patience is another thing for a striving writer to hold on to. I doubt anyone succeeds over night, And there are those long weeks one has to wait after submitting a story to a publisher. But don't just wait, the trick is to grab onto the discipline and sit down and start a new story.

The final one I'll touch on is prospective. For me this means not allowing discipline to take over my life. There is more to life than writing.