Welcome to the RWA Writes blog!
I’d love to be able to tell you what to expect in future blogs, but I fear that the topics I’ll be writing about roughly every three or four weeks are going to be as much of a surprise to me as they will be to you. Ideas regarding what to write about sneak up on me. Most of the time, they skip away, giggling, before I can get a good grip on them. This blog will likely be the result of the few ideas that are too slow-moving to fully escape or too demanding to want to run away. I’ll also glean topics for this blog from the folks who contact me through this website.
This first blog is inspired by a couple of book fairs I recently attended, hoping to convince a few people to buy and read my book. At these fairs, the same questions came up several times.
FAQs
Today, I’ll attempt to answer the four most frequent questions I get:
Q: What do you do when you get writers’ block?
A: I sit down and get whatever minimal thoughts I have rattling around in my head down on paper. Sometimes it’s just a few words. Those few words may be all I can manage for the day, but I don’t let that bother me. At least I got something down on paper for that day. Other times, those few words take on a life of their own and spawn more words and ideas. Before I know it, several hours have gone by and I’ve written several chapters. If I hadn’t sat down, those words would never have come into being.
Q: Do you have a specific time of day dedicated to writing, or a certain number of words?
A: Heck, no! I can’t be that strict with myself. I write mostly in the afternoon, mostly weekdays (daytime TV isn’t terribly engaging and most of my friends are at work). I don’t set a number of words or pages to create each day – see the first question.
Q: Where do you get your ideas?
A: Dreams, nightmares, a weird fact from TV or social media that grabs my curiosity, or a memory from my childhood that pops up. Also, you’d be amazed how many people suggest story ideas when they find out you’re an author. My first book, for example, came about from a co-worker telling me about this crazy story she heard about a hotel fire in Milwaukee.
Q: Can I get your book at my local library?
A: Maybe. Some libraries have my book available on their shelves. If your library doesn’t, you can ask your librarian if they can get a copy. My book is available through the normal channels that libraries use to purchase books. There are so many books published each year, that it’s hard for a librarian to know which books to get. I can’t even imagine how hard that would be! The more people who ask for a book, the higher the chance they will order a copy.