When I Grow Up...

My friend Chi (AKA Elizabeth Isaacs) was on Goodreads the other day, searching out new books from her favorite historical-romance author, Lisa Kleypas. She came across a work she didn't know had even been published and realized it was the Kleypas' first novel.

Naturally, Chi was interested to see what people had to say about it, but was somewhat upset to find someone had made a comment along the lines of, "It shows this is Kleypas' early work."

This got me to thinking about writing in general. We all know that more writing makes for better writing. It's a learning process and a skill that has to be honed over time. I'm sure Kleypas, like all of us, looked at her first published novel with stars in her eyes. I'm also sure she, like all of us, has grown over time and shudders when she reads her earlier work.

She's grown.

Growth is what happens when you dedicate yourself to improving your craft. Where you once struggled with showing versus telling, now you can spot that problem a mile away. Or maybe you had a problem with dialog, but you studied authors who have mastered it, and now you know how to fix those problems ... or better yet, how to avoid them altogether.

I can see even in a year's time how I've grown as a writer. My first drafts are better the first time around, so there's less to clean up. The things I battled in the past are getting a little easier now. I still have a mound of issues I'm working through, and I have a long way to go, but I can also see how far I've come.

So, I both dread and eagerly await the day when someone says,"You can tell it's her earlier work." Because to me, that means I've accomplished what I set out to do: become a better writer!

Happy writing.

In the beginning was the word (not God's but mine)

Okay, so here I go with blogging--a pastime that I, not so long ago, swore was an obsessive desire to be noticed and considered it slightly narcissistic. My apologies where offense occurs. I understand blogging from a POV of being helpful, insightful, or in general, some way useful. Often as not, it's an excuse to think that your own opinion is somehow valid and necessary to the rest of humanity, or at least those with internet capability. Hopefully I won't forever fall under that category.

So my blog, however insignificant for the time being, will basically consist of my thoughts, feelings, and the such in the glorious though trying journey of gaining publication so that I can actually make a living doing what I love...writing.

Considering this is the very first time I have ever blogged about anything, this will no doubt be a learning process. Stick with me. I assume a little background might help...

March 1997--I wake up having had this fabulous dream--this happens often--and I decided that I want to explore the beings in my dream a little further. (Keep in mind here that I'm not a published writer and I haven't queried the first agent thus far. This means what's in my head and on paper is mine, for the time being.) So I get out a notebook and jot down 40 pages longhand. For whatever reason, I lay it down and don't pick it back up until April 2009. I went to my parent's house, dug the folder out of an old drawer and sat down at my laptop...I've been here ever since. That's the short version of what happened but it's all the basics.

So, here I am almost a year later and I've actually written two books. After I completed my first novel (at over 700 pages) I gave it to a few of my close friends, hoping they could offer valuable insight and critique. One friend in particular thought it would be better suited to split the book into two. Taking her thought into serious consideration--this is a feat that required some revamping--I divided the story and came out with double the books but double the work. That's okay though, it meant I could dedicate more effort and allot more time to developing my characters and the story line. Even in 700+ pages, I felt rushed in a lot of places and condensed things down in areas that didn't need condensing.

Here I am now. One novel completed at 99,000 words and working on writing my query letter. But hey, query letters are another issue altogether. This is just the beginning!