Where is your special place for quiet and solitude? For reflecting, reading, to just be.
Is it somewhere close by where you can easily go pretty much anytime you want? Or is it someplace further afield that you can only visit once or a handful of times a year?
Mine is my backyard. Which has been especially convenient during Covid š
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I miss people. I miss spontaneous get togethers, unannounced summer visitors and the fun of planning birthday celebrations. Inevitable, I suppose, as a result of months-long, pandemic-induced, relative isolation. At least thatās what Iām telling myself.
Letting housework slide and lounging for too many hours in front of the television have lost their appeal. Puzzling to me is why even reading is less pleasurable lately. Iāve chalked it up to the fact that it is such a solitary activity and what I want these days is more connection with live people.
Amid my somewhat limiting day-to-day routines, something promising has happened that has me excited about writing again.
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This summer, I have been learning āhow to editā my first thriller novel (Commercial Fiction) with the help of a professional editor. So far, it has been an enlightening experience. I had no idea there were so many different levels and layers to the editing process. If I did, I might have quit writing years ago.Ā *Joking! I love the torture.*
Last week, I tackled the āPassive Voiceā found within my novel. I am currently sitting between 2-3% Passive Voice. A score of less than 5% in your manuscript is acceptable. While educating myself on how to remove it, I stumbled upon something else. Before I tell you, I want to ask a question:
Do you know why some novels only sell a handful of copies and other novels sell millions?
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Ah, 2020.
So much mis- [ and dis!]-information! And still so much truth remains unknown. So much has been conveniently hidden. Masked.
Let me give you an example. Yesterday I learned the street I lived on in Toronto was named for a ruthless slave trader. What a shocking revelation for a very exclusive CanadianĀ neighbourhood!
So now that city officials have that knowledge, what will they do with it? Change the name entirely? Leave things as is? Put up an educational plaque to remind people of aĀ dark and cruel part of Muddy Yorkās history? Weāll have to see. Meantime, for a murder mystery, what a great motive. Imagine a respectable leader of the community learning the family’s fortune has been based on slave-trading. What would that person do to keep that knowledge form being widely spread? And on the other side, how tempting it might be for someone to try and blackmail the respectable citizen! Another motive!
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Iāve heard about the Curve Ball being delivered by famous pitchers to equally famous sluggers. Some people watch baseball games just to see it thrown. Apparently, you have to be āreally goodā to throw it and āeven betterā to hit it. Why World Series Pennants have been won or lost because of it.
Now each and every one of us get to check our own score at dealing with the Curve Ball that was thrown into our personal game of life. Mine arrived on March 10, 2020 when the Canadian Government said donāt leave the country. Poof, the vacation to Cuba vanished. Two weeks later I was told to shut down my private practice in psychology. Poof, done! Then my three times a week fitness routine ended. No more socializing with my friends and family. My arm and shoulder began aching from all the āwoe is meā commiseration phone calls. Traffic ground to a halt. Virtually everyone in my neighbourhood actually listened to the guidance and abided by the rules. Those that didnāt were easy enough to avoid.
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After the first draft, my next struggle is reading it. I cringe at my bad writing and wonder if I should just throw-in the towel right there. What kind of writer could I possible be to write such dreck? So much telling! So little showing. Ugh. Iām embarrassed for myself.
But then I remember editing, thatās where it all gets fixed. And truth be told, I like editing the best. Thatās where the wordplay really comes in. I love the challenge of taking a clunky phrase and turning it into a Cinderella sentence. And often, itās easier than it looks. Except when it isnāt.
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Several years ago, I wrote a blog for this site about things I found during a summer day to inspire my writing: https://ascribewriters.com/summer-time-to-be-inspired/ One of the inspirations was a visit to the Keady market and observing the live animal auction. I began to imagine a dragon auction and what it would be like, who would come to such an auction, would it be dangerous? This idea floated in my head and although I loved the idea, I could not fit it into my current fantasy book. It was nothing more than a scene with no characters or plot yet.
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Everyoneās path to publication is different. Weāve all seen the success stories–author’s publication tales–tweeted out to the world, where an author shares their journey to publication. I like to think of it as the Chilkoot Trail during the Klondike Gold Rush.
Some adventurers make it over the pass, find a parcel of land, strike gold, make it rich and head home. Iām not naĆÆve enough to think they didnāt sacrifice and work hard and have in equal measure talent and good fortune, but that isnāt every prospectorās story.