booktastic

By the time I finished writing my post yesterday it was raining in earnest - so I decided to postpone the library trip. Just as well, because today I picked up one of the books that I was going to return and decided against it.

I don’t really know why I picked up How to Write and Market Your Mystery Novel in the first place: it doesn’t have a very promising cover, and honestly, most of the time I have no use for “how to write” type books. I flip them open, eager for helpful hints, and get things like this: “As an exercise, write one page describing your last family meal in detail.” And then gives some examples of other people’s one-page essays and what they got out of the experience.

Exercises are great… But I’m kind of past that point, you know? I don’t have time to waste writing a page about my last vacation, or my first car, or whatever. I have been published. I have plays that have been performed. I don’t need to know how to write. (Okay, that may be a debatable statement, so let me rephrase it: I know how to write to my satisfaction. Whether to anyone else’s satisfaction remains to be seen.)

I’m in the midst of writing a novel (my second for the year. Well, third if you count the novella I rushed off right after I left my job. The first two are doing the rounds at the moment). I’ve been contemplating giving up on this one, tentatively titled Not An Actor’s Son, because I’m facing a few difficulties with the plot and the location of the novel. The notion had crossed my mind, just yesterday, of simply quitting this book and picking up a different one I had in mind. However, when I flipped open How to Write and Market Your Mystery Novel today, one of the very first things that met my eye was this passage:

“It is much easier to start a novel than to finish it. Often in the middle of a book, the author bgins to listen to that nasty little critic who resides in the left side of the brain. The critic says things like, ‘This is really awful. Nobody will want to read this. What made you think you could be a writer in the first place? Besides, you’ve already got an idea for a new book that you’re excited about. Why don’t you abandon this one and start the new book?’ This happens to most writers I know, even those who have published books. Don’t listen to that voice!” (p.85).

Ever have one of those moments where you feel like the Universe is speaking to you? It was one of those moments. So I sat down and wrote another ten pages on Not an Actor’s Son and I like where it’s going.  We shall see.

Oh, on a more topical note, when I went to the Library I was interested to see that they had an Early Voting room there. There was a palpable electricity in that room: I’ve never seen people so excited about voting. It made me really want to go in there and vote, but unfortunately I hadn’t carried a “proper ID” with me today, so I didn’t. Oh well! I can do it any time, I guess, until the thirtieth (or on November 4th of course) so there isn’t any rush. I just thought it was kind of interesting the magnetic pull that room had on me - and seemed to have on others as well. It’s an interesting time, folks. A very interesting time. — Mrs. Hall

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