Meandering on Mondaywith Janet Lane Walters

First meander is about #JeRoWriMo and how I've passed the 30,000 words needed to reach the finish line. As I crossed, I thought of all the words I re-wrote that didn't count. Since I'm a by hand writer and a draft writer, the story evolves with each draft. What I figure is that I've  penned about 75000 words during the challenge. Almost makes me think my hands are falling off. How did I reach the count of how many new words I've really written. This is how it goes. College ruled paper, fine point pens. No matter what each page back and front of a page averages 600 words. Some more and some less. I also keep track of how many words each chapter of each draft contains. So it's a matter of subtracting. I suppose it would be easier to do this on the computer but I've been writing this way for nearly 50 years and if it's not broken, don't fix it.

I have two upcoming talks anirst one about Plot and I'm impressed by what I've said so far. This will be a short talk. Fifteen minutes at a library. Now I've been to this library before and I really hope this time will be better than the last one. That time we came but no one else did. Should make for an interesting evening if the same thing goes. But I'll be an optomist and see what happens.

As to my writing. I'm really moving forward with To Heal Shattered Dreams, the first of the 12 Moon Child stories. The Goddesses of Er is moving slowly but I'm removing words and making the story make sense. 40 years or so ago, I write this book and there it sat but I'll finish it one of these days. Have planned the second Moon Child story as yet untitled and will soon start on a rough draft of the tale of a city cop and a small town woman who were high school sweethearts who broke it off and drifted apart, Am also getting ready to put four more books up on Create Space and that does take some time to do. Looks to be a busy week.

Meandering on Monday with Janet Lane Walters #amwriting

This is a new year and let's see where I meander today. The first is anonymous posters to the blog. I am getting tired of someone trying to sell medicine on the blog but I also don't want to amke things hard for the real readers and writers who want to post without giving their names. Not sure why they do this. Would I hunt them down and try a hard sell on them. No. I rather go for the soft sell and for showing the work of other authors on the blog. So give me a break. If you're pushing medicines, don't do it on my blog.

Yesterday was 12th night and my Christmas tree did not come down. I'm not sure why. Probably because I'll need a day to pack all the decorations away. Also because it's pretty. Maybe it's because I like the tree. I finally put the Christmas music CDs to rest and am now entering the classical phase of my music listening while I write. But sometimes I write to silence. That's especially true when I'm doing a rough draft.

As to my writing. Today I will finish chapter 8 of a rough draft of a novella expected to finish at between 30 to 40 thousand words. Odd thing is that I know the title of the series but I've been toying with a title for the book. I usually have the title before I begin a story. Sometimes it's the title that brings on the creative juices for the story. There will be 12 stories here with Moon Child as the main title. I have an idea of what I want to do with the series but that will wait until I have at least three of them written and a fourth planned.

As to the Goddesses of Er. Had to go back and type in the missing chapters. They may be in my computer somewhere but I couldn't find them. So glad I print out each chapter when it's finished. Once I catch up on typing chapters 7 and 8, I'll be finished with the rough draft and can type that while I work on some nore chapters in the Goddesses.

The last thing I'll meander on is that I must start doing some promo things. I always hate to take time away writing to do this but I will take at least an hour a day to find some blogs for a post other than my own or do some other sort of thing. One promotes their name as well as an individual book.

Meandering on Monday with Janet Lane Walters #amwriting

Christmas Eve and preparations are nearly done. I've been thinking about Christmas pasts and how my father really loved the holiday. He was a steelworker and often was on strike for the holidays but he always made sure his children had a good Christmas. The tree usually went up on Christmas Eve until my younger brother stopped believing in Santa Claus. The last year this happened was one of those strike years. After my brother was in bed, my father sent me and a friend out to buy the tree. Money was very short and I had two dollars. The police and firemen held a joint tree place so that's where my friend and I headed with a large wagon. I had a dollar and a half. Most of the men running the stand knew my father and mother so I managed to buy a nine foot tree for my money. If you would have seen my friend and I hauling this on a Red Flyer wagon clear across town, and up steps that went under the railroad tracks. When we arrived home, my father laughed. Since there weren't enough decorations for the entire tree he put it in a corner and we decorated the sides and the front. Fortunately the ceilings were higs so the tree fit. Was a really great Christmas. I got a chemistry set and stunk up the house with my concoctions.

Here's another meander. When I buy a book I intend to read it all. I won't name titles or anything else but I just finished a book where not only was the heroine too stupid to live, the writer seemed to feel the reader belonged in the same category. Was supposed to be a romantic suspense. There was little romance until the last page. The suspense was/s accomplished. There was nothing wrong with the writing. The sentences flowed long and smooth but in suspense the tension must be there. Also as soon as the bad guy made an appearance I knew who the killer was. Took about 200 more pages for the police and the heroine to figure this out.

Enough meandering. Right now I've started a new story that will be part of a 12 story set of novellas and I'm also working on the Goddesses of Er. Now reclaining the first 2 chapters that were lost somewhere in the ether.

meandering on Monday with Janet Lane Walters

Today's meander begins with a question. How much backstory does a reader need to know and when and how should this backstory be given? Been reading some contest entries recently and found the greatest problem with some, both published and unpublished was the amount of backstory given in the opening few pages. This rather annoyed me and made me want to skip those pages. Not a good idea when a contest is being judges. Often the offered backstory is something the writer needs to know. The blocks of  paragraphs, sometimes interesting to read, and other times not, are usually about events the writer needs to know to develop both the characters and the plots. But to find line after line regaling the reader with what happened to the hero or heroine in the past slows the pace of the story, can confuse the reader.

How these paragraphs of backstory are done can vary. Sometimes the writer uses a prologue. This can be effective if kept short and really have had an effect on the character. Otherwise the reader may get the wrong idea of what the story is really about. Then there are the stories that start out with a bang of a paragraph or two of action and then stop to give what happened to the hero or heroine in the past and this goes on for pages.

Some beginnings give a bit of backstory that is just enough. A clue, a hint of what happened in the character's past to make them what they are today.

How about you? Do lengthy backstories in the beginning of the book annoy you?

My own writing continues with work on The Goddesses or Er and on finishing the corrections on Lines of Fire so I can submit it to one of my publishers.

Meandering on Monday with Janet Lane Walters #amwriting

Another week has pass the past week there were so many meanders impinging on me that I'm not sure where to start. The first is contests. I've been busily reading books and partials for two contests. Next year there will be a third. I did drop out of judging one contest since I found it one that was difficult to handle when the second came into line. So next year there will be three again. Hopefully spaced a bit better.

The second meander was about a talk I'd like to give and that's on World Creating. A sudden inspiration struck. No matter what genre we write, we are creating a world. There will be more on that later. Now to busily sketch that idea out. Do I have a special insight. Who knows.

The third meander was something I kind of disagree with. A fellow writer said the only reason to go with a publisher is for the editing factor. I'm not sure I agree with that, but then I don't like the idea of doing the entire mss myself. Art work, formatting, editing. Not sure I want to hire people to do these chores or learning to do them myself. Part of this has to do with age. Doing these things takes a lot of time and I have a lot of books that still want to be written.

Continuing to type the corrections into Lines of Fire and should be done by the the month or into the beginning of December. Will come close to my target word length. Am re-working what is not The Goddesses of Er and the new twist seems to make the words much faster. Just finished a fight scene and felt as if I'd been the fighter when I finished. Being part of an imaginary scene alwys tells me I'm on the right track.

So enough meandering and it's back to work.

Meandering on Monday with Janet Lane Walters

They say it's all in a name. For me it's all in a title. I was totally stumped with my current WIP because I did't like the title. The title was appropriate forty years ago when I began the book and sent it out again and again. The final straw was when a publisher of the type of book it was decided to stop publishing fiction. Then I was searching through my old files sort of clearing things out and found the mss on carbon paper. The title had nothing to do with where my head is not in writing but the elements of a good story were there. As I pondered what to do, I saw elements I had missed and knew what I wanted to do. Thus were born the Goddesses of Er, Sola, Luna and Erda. I've used the concept of goddesses before. Once the goddesses took root in my thoughts and the new title was in place, I was able to see what stayed and what had to go. Some to the to go things were archiac stules of writing and back story in the first 25 pages. In fact a lot of those things took up pages and pages. Leaving enough backftory to set up the world was interesting. Setting a world when it's one of fantasy or paranormal is difficult. The reader had to believe in the world you're created but not be so bogged down in a history lesson that they forget what they're doing. So now I can continue to fashion this story.

A real problem I'm having these days is with my reading habits. I've spent nearly all my gift cards and so must choose what I want to read on my Kindle carefully. Can't wait for Christmas. On one of my loops we've been talking about pricing ebooks. The conference I went to and a speaker I listened to said some interesting things about pricing. He felt 2.99 was too low and books should be above 4 dollars and yet not above eight. I seldom even buy one that's above that price. There are books I would buy since they belong to favorite authors but I'm not about to pay 9.99 or more for them. I'll wait. If they don't come down I'll have missed a book and they will have missed a sale. I'm sure they don't care.

So enough wandering for today and I'll get back to work plugging in corrections and working on the new story.