In the Nick of Time - Before the End

Writing is my life saver. It keeps me sane and maybe it keeps me from packing a bag with my camera, sketchpad and pencils and hitting the road too. So, when my writing is not going as planned, it is really nice to find the perfect answer to the current problem.

I have said before, you need to be “open” to ideas to learn from them and for one to strike just the right note. This has been achieved, yet again, in an article by Cheryl Klein, in her blog Brooklyn Arden and in a speech she gave at the Terminus 2008 Potter Conference in Chicago, Illinois. It is also posted on-line at A Few Things Writers Can Learn from Harry Potter and I thank, Ms. Klein, a thousand times over, for all of the help she has, unknowingly, given me over this past two year period.

Unlike other writing sites, which tell you that you MUST do this and you CANNOT do that, Ms. Klein tells you what is so fantastic about a multi-million dollar book and how to do it in your own way.

Then, she gives you approval, where all the other’s will tell what not to do, she tells you to write what you need to write. Do not write to the market. Write to please yourself first. You are a reader after all, or you would not be here.

So, if you want to know what is so good about a book opening, or how to make your reader fall in love with your characters, or why a YA novel can have an adult theme and how to do it, spend a day or, as I have, two years reading her advice.

I just needed a refresher, to remind me where I am going and what step I need to take now to get there. She puts theme and writer’s voice and plotting into perspective for me and so, now, I shall return to my writing.

I will take my first draft, with its multiple edits done already and I will outline the other four books of my proposed series, because how can I know how to end this book (my latest struggle) if I only have a vague idea of where this journey will take me?