Listening to the story

This part of writing, the rewrite, is why I’m glad I don’t have to produce two or three books a year.  And it’s why I’m glad (well, almost glad) that I’m not a writer who locks herself into an outline.  Because what I’m doing now is listening to the story. The first draft gives me…

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Donkeys and meteors

I’m over at the blog for Kepler’s bookstore this week, The Well Read Donkey, talking about beginnings, middles, and ends. While you’re there, maybe you could even click onto the Kepler’s link and buy a book?  Hooray for indies! And I would be remiss if I did not point out that the Perseid meteors are…

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Congratulations, Ms King, it’s an ending

Yesterday was crunch day. I’d worked my way through the rewrite, incorporating half a tree’s worth of PostIts and a brick of graphite, and reached the final scene. I wrote it back in April, which as you may or may not remember was a busy time anyway for LRK and her e-world, and although there…

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The devil’s in the details

I hate plots.  Why do I need a plot, anyway?  I have 300 pages of all these great scenes with all these grand characters, and then I have to sit down and do a rewrite that makes sure it all makes sense.  Because a mystery novel kind of needs to make sense.  Mainstream fiction can…

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Book tours

One of the odder sides of being a writer in modern times is the way a solitary, dreamy individual is periodically required to become a travelling salesman. Once a year, more or less, the person who spends her working days in clothing that resembles pajamas folds up her laptop, scowls at her hair, retrieves her…

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