Welcome to this week’s stop on the Writing Process
Blog Hop! My friend and fellow author Margo Hoornstra tagged me to
participate and share a little about how I write. You can see what Margo wrote
on January 27th about her writing process at http://www.margohoornstra.blogspot.com/.
Without further adieu, here is my take on the four questions each of us has answered.
Without further adieu, here is my take on the four questions each of us has answered.
1) What
am I working on? Some years ago, I had a number of short stories published in
Woman’s World magazine. Currently, I’m working on updating those
stories and putting them together in anthologies to publish on Amazon. I have two
collections available for Kindle now, An Uncommon Prince and Other Short Stories and Sky of Magic. I'm hoping to have a third book ready
shortly.
2) How
does my work differ from others of its genre? I would say the way these stories
differ the most is that they are short stories rather than full length novels.
They’re all romances and most have a theme of finding love in unexpected
places.
3) Why
do I write what I do? Although I also write full length works, I like writing
short stories because of the faster pace and because it takes less time to
finish a story. My favorite part about writing romance of any length is the
promise of a happy ending. While life is not always happy, we know and expect
romance stories to end this way, and it gives the reader hope that it can be
happy.
4) How
does my writing process work? I usually start out with a character, or two
characters, and let them tell me their story. I’m not a total “pantser.” In
longer works, I do like to write out a short synopsis of what I think will
happen in the story before I begin it; but it’s not that detailed and I like to
leave room for surprises to happen, for the characters to take the story in new
directions. If I know too much ahead of time, it’s easy to lose interest. I’d
rather find out as I write what is the real story. But I also like to have a
bit of an outline to follow, just in case I get lost.
So that’s a little about how I write. If you’ve followed along on this blog hop, you’ve seen that it’s different for everyone and that there is no right way, only what works for you. Next week, be sure to check out the next stop on the Writing Process Blog Hop when Constance Bretes talks about her process at http://conniebretes.weebly.com/connies-blog.html/. Connie has worked for the state of Michigan for over 35 years. About 5 years ago she decided to do something fun and started writing romance stories. A member of Romance Writers of America and Mid-Michigan RWA, Connie is celebrating her first release--Delayed Justice--today from Beachwalk Press.
