Moving On

If you read my last blog post you probably walked...or rather clicked away thinking....Whine Much??  Or something less flattering. But, whatever. I'm over it.

So, now I'm going to post something writing related. This is actually a repost of an article I did a while back on another blog...with some minor adjustments. Why am I reposting?? Well....cuz I need to post something and my mind is a bit of a blank and lately I've had a few people make that irritating comment "I always wanted to write a book". 

Anyway....writing is as easy or as hard as you want to make it, but, truly, not everyone should try it without learning the proper technique....yes, there is one and then some. And, once you learn it then put your own spin on it. How do you learn technique? By READING! Me, I love to read, doesn’t matter the genre—mystery, thriller, suspense, romance, and I tend to fall in love with the characters, especially if they’re recurring.

One of my favorite characters is Lee Child’s Jack Reacher. Lee is eighteen novels into this character and every book takes you on a pulse-pounding adventure and you can’t wait to grab the next book to see where he goes next. But, I have to admit, the first character I fell in love with wasn’t so much a single character as it was a family of characters.  

One of the first romance writers I ever read was Nora Roberts. My kids gave me one of her books for my birthday back in the early 90’s…okay, I bought it and said it was from them…they were still babies. Haha  Anyway, after devouring that book I tried to get my hands on as many of her books as I could find and that’s when I came across the Macgregor's! If you’re not familiar with them, look for them at your local library or on Amazon. Love her or hate her, Nora knows how to bring a character to life so much so that you just want to adopt them.

Building a character isn’t really as hard as some seem to think. There are workshops and blog posts galore about how to build a character using worksheets and graphs and whatever. More power to you if that’s how you do it, but like plotting….I just can’t go there. It’s not that I don’t know anything about my character when I start writing because I do, they are generally a part of me and some members of my family—Hispanic, lower to middle class, everyday people---so I don’t need to chart it all.

 
In my novella, Her Will His Way, I started the story knowing only one thing about my character Anita Perez—she didn’t speak Spanish. Why is this a character trait? Because Anita has just moved to the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, which is predominately Hispanic, to run a flower shop. She’s too stubborn to admit she won’t succeed, especially when her sexy state trooper neighbor Antonio Hernandez tells her she can’t do it. (you’ll have to read the book…heh)

So anyway when I sit down to write a new novel the only information I need to know about my character is “What traumatic event happened to her/him as a child to make her/him the person s/he is today?” The rest—back-story, goal, motivation, conflict— will fall into place as I write.

But, I will say....though I find it easy to write a character, I sometimes have trouble naming them. So, I should do a contest or something, huh? Comment below, and I'll use your name in my next book as either a character or something else. We'll have to see where the book is going. haha

How far into your reading list are you?

I've been on a bit of a tear lately...uh, that's the expression, right?
Anyway, while I wait on my son to finally move out and give me back my office--(that sounds bad, but the kid is almost 22 and has no life) I decided to tackle my "To-be-read" list of books. I have a lot of them, some a couple of years old that I've just totally forgotten I had because I buy new books from my writer friends as they come out and add them to the stack. Yeah, I know, I should start my reading with the bottom of the pile, but, I don't.

Anyway, in the past couple of weeks I've read
Girls Just Wanna Have Guns (book three in the Bobby Faye series by Toni McGee Causey)
Natural Born Charmer --Susan Elizabeth Phillips
Kill Her Again--Robert Gregory Browne
Kiss Her Goodbye--Robert Gregory Browne (although I read this one last month)
Fatal Secrets--Allison Brennan (also read Sudden Death last month)
Say Goodbye--Lisa Gardner
Chasing Darkness--Robert Crais
Two Minute Rule--Robert Crais (my son read it too and was disappointed it wasn't an Elvis Cole book..hah)

I'm getting ready to read Black Lightning--John Saul
I love his work but haven't read anything in a while, so I'm looking forward to being creeped out. hah

On Friday the local library had a book sale (1/2 price) so I went to pick up some books I had once planned to buy but forgot about. So, yeah, instead of my list getting shorter, it's getting longer. (not that I'm complaining.) =)

I've always been a reader, even when I was a kid. I think I developed the love of books from my mother (and I hope she'd be happy to know she passed on something good to me) she was a fan of books. She used to go to the library every couple of weeks and check out up to ten books at a time. Mostly Barbara Cartland, at least those were the ones I noticed on her dresser. No, I didn't pick them up to read (I was only 11--but I did sneak one of her books once and it scared the crap out of me because it was Helter Skelter.) lol I think that's why I later became a John Saul fan...

Anyway, I suspect my mother's love of reading (like my own) came from a sort of lonliness and despair she felt at being a single mom of seven. I even suspect she planned to die at an early age (40) so she wouldn't have to be lonely (the mind can be a powerful tool).

Uh, anyway that's a post for another time (or couch) hah

Although my inital love of reading came from my need to 'escape' my life (as a teen), over the last ten years I've started using my love of books as a training tool. I'd always had stories in my head and occasionally I would write the stories down, sometimes in screenplay form (not that I knew how to do that..again, I was a teenager), but I never really thought to pursue the dream of being a published writer. It was a fleeting thought sometimes, but I never had enough faith in myself to go for it. Shortly before I turned 40 I decided it was time to do something about that dream...part of it was because I was nearing 40 and so far it looked like I'd surpass the age. (that's another 'couch' blog)

Okay, if you're not totally dizzy with this rambling post, I'll get to the point....whatever that was. ;-P

I guess I just want to thank those writers out there who had the courage to bleed onto the page and send those stories out there to be published. Without their knowledge and talent (and encouragement from many I've had the pleasure to meet--some of whom are listed above) I wouldn't have jumped on the bandwagon too. Their words not only entertain me for hours on end, they also teach me how to entertain others.