There were times in writing my Mogi Franklin books when I thought I had a good historical hook, a good mystery, and a good plot, but couldn’t find the right words to create a good reading experience. My sentences felt shallow, the paragraphs squishy, the characters two dimensional, and the pace uneven. I saw no improvement even when I repeatedly reworked the manuscript.
I felt more amateur than what I thought I should be. I was not happy. I was working too hard. I was reworking too much. I felt clumsy at telling the story and I did not understand why. On December 31st, 2012, I gave up working a part-time job and gave myself one year to cure my writing inadequacies. I needed to learn to either write better or to relegate my writing to hobby status. This was not prompted by income, by the way. I have a pension; I don’t need to sell books. I don’t even need to write books – it’s just something that I want to do. My quest was prompted because I wanted to write well: to produce good, interesting, well-written stories that people desired to read. I also wanted to have pleasure writing the stories, to have confidence as I was writing them that people would enjoy reading them, and to feel pride in my level of craft. In the next several blogs, I going to tell you what happened during that year and you will be surprised by the most meaningful lesson that I learned. It had nothing to do with writing and everything to do with music.
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AuthorDon Willerton has been a reader all his life and yearns to write words like the authors he has read. He's working hard at it and invites others to share their experiences. |