The Pause That Refreshes

After publishing my second Nia D’Amato detective mystery this past January, I decided to take a break and try something completely different: a YA fantasy novel. I also wanted to tackle writing a story from a first person point of view. This past summer I finished a first draft of the story. It was fun to write since I loosely based the setting and characters on where I grew up but writing in the first person was more difficult than I anticipated. There are narrative limitations when you write everything through the eyes of your protagonist (in my case, Theo). I found myself slipping into a third person point of view which members of my writing group were quick to point out when they read some of my drafts. Since everything got filtered through Theo’s eyes, he must interpret the words, gestures, and actions of everyone he encounters. As a young teenager, it’s often incorrect! I found by mid-novel, I had mostly adjusted to this different point of view and came to enjoy the challenge.

I am attaching the opening scenes from the book tentatively titled It’s Theo, not Theodore.

Chapter 1

There was a kid on each arm holding me tight against the rough bark of the tree. My voice came out sounding whiney and scared. “Come on guys. Stop it. Let me go.”

“Time for your wedgie, The-o-dore.” There was laughter all around me. I twisted and squirmed, trying to delay the inevitable. “Hold still, you little shit.”

Jeff Flaherty. Oh, I really hated him. I could feel his grubby fingers trying to grab the top of my underwear. I pleaded, “No. Stop. Don’t. Leave me alone.” More chuckles.

Sister Ann Michelle’s voice rang out loud and menacing. “What in the world are you boys up to over there?”

My arms were suddenly free, and I fell to the ground. Jeff turned and stood in front of me. His voice sounded innocent, almost hurt by the accusation. “We’re not doing anything, Sister. We were just fooling around.”

I could hear her rosary beads swaying like a long-beaded chain as she left the broken asphalt coming to an abrupt stop on a strip of gravel and broken glass. She stood with chalk-coated hands planted on her hips and pushed him out of the way. I looked up into her puzzled hooded face. She planted her fists on her hips. “Theodore Raymond. Why in the world are you sitting on the ground?”

Now I know I could have said they were giving me a wedgie and that would have gotten them in trouble. First, I would have been wicked embarrassed saying that to her. Second, she didn’t have to go home with these idiots every day and worry about something much worse happening. “I was doing anything wrong. I was just sitting here watching them all fooling around.”

Her eyes narrowed. Was she was reading some truth meter hidden under her black nun’s habit that was hovering over the word lie? “Well, you should use the sense that God gave you. Now get up off the ground.” She spun around. “As for the rest of you,” she turned and gave each of them a wicked stare, “behave yourselves or I’ll have your parents down here and you’ll lose recess for a month.” Nobody spoke. She glared at each of them as they tried to avoid the evil eye, then she spun in place like a black twister and hurried away.

Jackie Peterson, one of the kids holding me, walked over. “Saved by the penguin.” He frowned as he looked at me, like a new idea had somehow survived to make it all the way to his brain. “Well, at least you’re not a squealer.” He turned and joined the other members of the torture committee. They kicked at the dirt and cursed their rotten luck.

I knew why Jackie said that. There was a time last fall that he thought I squealed on a bunch of kids for leaving the playground and running on to the lush green rectory grounds next to the school. They got in a lot of trouble. The whole time the teacher yelled at them, they turned and gave me threatening looks while they hissed death threats. I tried gesturing to them that it wasn’t me, but it didn’t matter. On my way home after school, a bunch of them pushed me down and started punching and kicking me. By the time it was over, I lay curled up on the ground, crying, wanting to just shrivel up and die. I think what hurt more than the beating was that I was no longer just a loser; I was a hated loser. Jackie found out a few days later it was another kid who squealed on them. He never apologized to me or anything. He just looked away with narrowed eyes and said they found out who really did it. Lucky me. I moved up to being just a plain old loser again.

I managed to make it through the rest of that day with Jeff only trying to trip me once as I walked back to my seat from the blackboard. I hoped Abby hadn’t seen what they tried to do to me earlier. She was the one girl that made my heart beat faster every time I saw her, but it didn’t really matter. She didn’t even know I existed. Every year since about fourth grade things had kind of gone downhill for me. I only had a few friends. Well, they weren’t really friends. Sometimes I’d hang out with them when their other friends were busy. Eighth grade was quickly turning into one of the worst years of my life.

Dinner took place religiously every night at 6:00. Our dining room was small, and the wallpaper looked like my Dad got leftover rolls from a bad Chinese restaurant remodeling job. It was gray and had a pattern of grapefruit-size light red pagodas across it. Meals were always noisy affairs with the sounds of five kids all trying to talk at the same time, competing with the clatter of food being scooped onto plates.

At dinnertime, my mother would ask everyone how their day went at school. Tonight, I played with my baked cod, mashed potatoes, and little orange carrot hockey pucks as I listened to another one of my older sister’s perfect days at St. Gregory’s High School. A forkful of carrots was halfway to my mouth when Mom looked over at me. “So what did you learn at school today, Theo?”

Now I was never really tempted to tell my parents about what actually happened ‘at school today’. I knew from painful experience that if I did, my father would react like an erupting volcano, slamming down his fork, and threatening to call the convent and complain about those damn kids. My mother would be very concerned about me, asking if I was okay, then in a cooler voice, she’d go over exactly what they would do about it after supper.

So, I mentioned nothing about the attempted wedgie and tried to think up some bit of useless information that the teacher talked about. “Well, we learned about diagramming sentences with participle phrases, then I had to do one on the blackboard.”

I hadn’t planned to continue, but my father was a bottom-line kind of guy. “So how did you do, Theo?”

“Ah. I did it right.”

He nodded. “Good and I’m sure we’ll see some improvement on your next report card.”

I had learned never to give them any cause to think I wasn’t doing well. “Sure. I guess so, Dad.”

I took a stab at trying to get some homework done after supper, but I could be distracted by the littlest things, like a spider that attempted to swing from one side of the window to the other. After a couple of hours at the dining room table pretending to do my schoolwork, I was barely half finished. “All done, Mom. I think I’ll go upstairs and read for a bit, then turn in.” Reading was always a safe excuse to escape from my mother’s watchful eyes.

I had been lying in bed for a while, trying to count the squashed mosquito bodies on the ceiling by the dim light coming in from the hall. But what I was really trying to do was to forget my humiliating day at school.

The phone rang. I could only hear the hushed voice of my mother talking, then my Dad’s voice a little louder. Everything suddenly fell silent. That was never a good sign. My father’s footsteps grew louder and louder, then stopped. His gravelly voice rolled up the stairs like a cannon blast. “Theo, come down here, we need to talk to you.” I slid off the bed and, for a minute, didn’t move. My father only used that voice when something really bad was going on. What had I done now? I took my time going down the stairs, trying to delay the bad news, or whatever this was, as long as possible. When I got to the kitchen doorway, I froze. I could see Mom’s back. She was sitting, shaking a little. Was she crying?

Is It Over Yet? Will It Ever Be Over?

I remember reading fiction books that pulled me into a frightening world of global sickness, death, and frustrating social isolation. I’d close the book, glad it was only a story. And now we live in that horror story every day and I’m long past the point of hoping I’ll wake up to find it was only a bad dream. We’ve already been trapped in this nightmare for a year now. And as we slowly crawl out of this winter of darkness toward the flickering light of a hopeful spring day, I have to stop and wonder what this new world will be like. It may look a lot similar to the one we left in early 2020, but if we close out eyes, we know it won’t feel the same anymore. Families will struggle with the unending pain of loss and lingering sickness. Masks, sanitizers, and personal protective equipment will be commonplace; our greetings will be socially distant and feel empty, cold, sterile; the euphoria and energy that often comes with being part of a large group will be a fond memory that we now struggle to recall.

Sankaty Lighthouse

I’ve kept busy writing this past year, partly to just keep my sanity, not that there was ever that much to begin with. My second Nia D’Amato novel is finally published in a variety of formats. Inn Season opens with Nia taking a leisurely bike ride that shockingly ends with her discovering a mother and daughter pinned beneath a fallen tree. She unwittingly finds herself drawn into a puzzling chain of events, quickly discovering idyllic Nantucket hides a dark undercurrent of lies, secrets, and clandestine relationships. Against the advice of her Deputy commander back in Boston, she teams up with Captain John Miller, fighting to decipher a tangled mess of teenage drama, obsessive passions, and puzzling adult behaviors. Solving one mystery only plunges them into another: the seemingly innocent death of a girl thirty years earlier. Nia and Captain Miller follow a trail of long-buried secrets as they race to find a critical piece of evidence before it’s destroyed.

Inn Season is available in a variety of formats on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and on Booklocker

It’s also available on Apple books.

If you enjoy reading it, give it a positive review. If you don’t, well, it’s okay if you just keep it to yourself:-)

Seeking Light in the Darkness

As I stood waiting for our cat to leisurely make his way back into the house, a chorus of discordant honking caught my attention. A chevron of geese in perfect formation were passing high overhead oblivious to the governor’s covid 19 social distancing orders, doing what comes naturally. It reminded me of what makes this pandemic so insidious and disquieting. We are social animals who naturally move in groups. This is especially evident with young people who are pushed and pulled by forces they don’t understand and can’t yet control. Have you ever watched a soccer game with children aged six and seven? Viewed from above it would look like a swarm of bees all chasing a small white ball. Teenagers cruising along in pheromone-fueled bodies, believing their youth makes them invincible, seek each other out like heat-seeking missiles confident of a successful encounter. Orders to stay socially isolated are difficult and stressful because they run counter to what drives us as social animals.

I admit I’ve found it difficult to stay focused on my writing with the media sounding the alarm on the dire nature of our condition on a daily basis. However, I have managed to finish another Detective Nia D’Amato novel and send it to the publisher. Inn Season is the second novel which finds our determined detective unwittingly drawn into the sudden death of a popular teenage girl on Nantucket. She quickly discovers this idyllic island paradise hides an undercurrent of clandestine relationships and disturbing events. I think book lovers who enjoy intriguing characters and a baffling mystery will find this story an enjoyable read. Thank you Hank Phillippi Ryan for coming up with a much better title.

Finally I’d like to thank author Carol Lynn Luck (Magnolias Never Bloom in September, Heroines of the Kitchen Table, Gym Class Klutz) who reviewed several new books including my first Nia D’Amato novel, Sparkles of Discontent in her latest blog (https://www.carollynnluck.com/blog?cid=f1c5bd0e-4f42-4d1e-ac0e-2365c1af4026) Thank you Carol!

• The Pause That Refreshes
• Is It Over Yet? Will It Ever Be Over?
• Seeking Light in the Darkness
• Sparkles Out on Audible
• Sparkles of Discontent Going Audio

Sparkles Out on Audible

Great News! Sparkles of Discontent has been released on Audible.com (or Amazon). It’s also available on Apple Books. I loved listening to Josh Brogadir’s narration. His interpretation of the character’s voices is nothing short of amazing. Listen to this audio sample from the first chapter.

I’ve also finished a rough draft of the follow-up novel to Sparkles. It’s tentatively titled, “In Season” and finds Detective Nia D’Amato unwittingly drawn into the sudden death of a popular teenage girl on Nantucket. She teams up with Captain John Miller in a race to unravel a web of deceit and clandestine relationships before the killer strikes again. I hope to have this out by late Fall.

Stay safe. Stay healthy.

Sparkles of Discontent Going Audio

I received a suggestion several weeks ago from an old friend and fellow writer, Carol Lach, that I should consider having an audio version of Sparkles of Discontent. She even suggested a reporter she knew from WCVB channel 5 in Boston, Josh Brogadir, to do the project. He read the book and liked it so after a number of email swaps, he agreed to do the audio version. We planned a phone conversation to discuss the book, and the voices of all the characters. I didn’t remember there being so many, but we covered even minor ones who make only a brief appearance. He sent me a sample of the first chapter and I gave the go ahead to do the entire book. It will probably be a couple of more months before I see, I mean hear, the finished product. I’ll let everyome know when it’s released. It will be available first through Audible and Apple books, before it’s available through other distributors.

Sparkles of Discontent Going Audio

I received a suggestion several weeks ago from an old friiend and fellow writer, Carol Lach, that I should consider having an audio version of Sparkles of Discontent. She even suggested a reporter she knew from WCVB channel 5 in Boston, Josh Brogadir, to do the project. He read the book and liked it so after a number of email swaps, he agreed to do the audio version. We planned a phone conversation to discuss the book, and the voices of all the characters. I didn’t remember there being so many, but we covered even minor ones who make only a brief appearance. He sent me a sample of the first chapter and I gave the go ahead to do the entire book. It will probably be a couple of more months before I see, I mean hear, the finished product. I’ll let everyone know when it’s released. It will be available first through Audible and Apple books, before it’s available through other distributors. Here is a sample of Chapter One.

Sparkles of Discontent – Chapter One – read by Josh Brogadir

Let Us Spray

Two weeks in social isolation and I’ve already started walking around in the house like a zombie craving a face to face, conversation that is. And to think at the beginning of the crisis, I was looking forward to getting more writing done. I’m sure I’ve done a lot less. I never realized how unsetting and pit of the stomach troubling it would be when every communication screamed new corona virus updates. In the past, crises seemed to drive people together to seek comfort and support. This one has pushed us apart, driving us to seek more virtual comfort and contact…a poor substitute for the real thing.

But, I reasoned that at least we could still go to the store and buy groceries. So I grabbed at the opportunity like a drowning man reaching for a life preserver. I naively thought I’d just go to Wegman’s, one of the larger stores in the area, and get everything I’d need. When I arrived, ropes were set up to guide the serpentine lines of shoppers waiting to check out. What was this? Had everyone suddenly gone mad? I was uneasy, but  confident the lines would be shorter when I was ready to leave. I turned into the fish and meat aisle – bare shelves. I felt I had wandered into a black hole and been warped back to Mother Russia. I reversed direction. Get to the staples – bread and milk. All the bread was gone. I headed over to the milk aisle. Only two left of the variety I needed. As I reached in, another beefier hand grabbed one. What was this relief I felt at scoring a half-gallon of milk? I kept wanting to slap my head and yell, wake up, wake up. Fool, you’ve only managed to get one item. I had an inspiration. I’d make my own bread. I desperately looked through the refrigerated glass cases. No more  fresh yeast left. Picking up speed, I headed for the baking aisle looking to pick up some of their pre-made mixes. I scanned the shelves. It looked like disappointment was going to be my new best friend. Everything was mostly gone except for a few exotic items I had never heard of.

I watched shoppers with crazed eyes and carts full of toilet paper cruise by. Toilet paper? How is that connected to this whole virus epidemic? Out of curiosity I headed for the paper aisle. Toilet paper and Kleenex were totally gone. The next aisle was cleaning products and hand sanitizers. Everything was sold out except for things like furniture polish and stainless-steel cleaner. I guess I know what people are not doing during this crisis. I walked to the end of the self-checkout line and did a count. There were thirteen carts in front of me. I looked down. One item. Decision time. I put the milk back and walked out empty-handed. I’d be smart and come back when they opened first thing in the morning.

I arrived just before 7:00 am, curious what dozens of people were doing standing outside. I slowed as I approached the entrance. Not just standing, but lined up and waiting to get in and nobody would dare try to cut in that solemn line. Another choice. Is this really going to be the new normal? I hung my head and joined the nervous queue.

Light from Darkness

I recently shared my second (unpublished) novel with author Jeffrey James Higgins (http://jeffreyjameshiggins.com) for him to critique. He provided incredibly valuable feedback that I have been using to improve my writing. I’m indebted to him for his thoughful analysis and have taken the liberty of including some of his more general suggestions below.

Structure

1. Structure can vary a bit, but people comprehend and enjoy stories the most when the fit classic structures. I recommend reading The Writer’s Journey, by Christopher Vogler, and Story, by  Robert McKee.  Every genre also has certain reader expectations and requirements. I also recommend reading Save the Cat Writes a Novel, by Jessica Brody. She outlines the fifteen beats that have to be in every story, where they need to be, and the differences in each genre.  
2. Avoid too many POV characters in the book. I would pick two or three, tops. You can have more, but it dilutes your character development.
3. Use only one point of view in every scene. Don’t head hop within the scene.
4. Avoid an omniscient POV, which is not used much in contemporary novels. It kills the tension. Stay inside the POV character and only show what they see, feel, hear, or think.
5. Thrillers and mysteries work best in truncated time frames.
6. Filter in background, no more than one paragraph at a time, and don’t put any of it in the first five pages.
7. Flashbacks and background kill pacing. It’s better to deliver the information through action and dialogue, but if you do need flashbacks or expository background, limit it to one or two paragraphs.
8. Start the novel in action. The inciting incident or catalyst usually comes about ten percent of the way into the story, but the first scene needs to show action, create questions in the reader’s mind, and hook them into the novel.
9. You need to have conflict in every scene. Someone wants something and something else prevents them from getting it.
10. Eliminate scenes which don’t move your plot forward or develop character.
11. Start scenes in the middle of action. For example, a police interview at the station should begin with the interview underway, not all the set up leading to it.
12. Don’t include the minutia of every movement or action. Only give the reader what they need, and not everything a character does. Jump to important moments.
13. Don’t use mundane scenes as a device to feed the reader backstory.
14. Once in those critical scenes, cut the excess dialogue and actions which the reader doesn’t need to know.

Character

1. Plots are important, but character makes novels. Every POV character needs to have an arc. I recommend reading “Writing the Breakout Novel,” by Donald Maass. He does a good job of explaining the complexity and importance of character.
2. Your POV characters need to have some character flaw they need to fix. They don’t have to know it themselves and other characters can express it for them. This is the theme of your book. Their need is satisfied by the end. Donald Maass explains this well.
3. POV characters also have wants, which are different from their needs. Jessica Brody explains this better than anyone. For example, solving crimes is what your protagonist wants, but what is the underlying psychological need it serves? Quitting her job and moving to the island may show she is finally taking charge of her life, but if that is her need, it needs to be more evident early.
4. All of your POV character’s wants and needs should come early and the conflict preventing them from getting it should be evident.
5. You have many characters, good for complexity, but it may be bordering on too many. A reader has to keep them all separate. Distinctive voices and appearance will help.

Craft

1. We all make the same craft mistakes and they are easily fixable. Agents and editors usually read less than five pages before rejecting a manuscript. I’ve heard many say they see the craft problems in the first few paragraphs then spot check the rest before rejecting.  I recommend reading The First Five Pages, by Noah Lukeman. He does a good job of pointing out common errors.
2. The first sentence needs to grab the reader. It is the most important line of the entire book. It should be memorable, clever, make the reader want to understand what is happening. ThrillerFest even has a contest for the best first lines.
3.  Every chapter and every scene should open with a hook, which pulls the reader into the action.
4. Every chapter and scene should end with a cliffhanger, or by putting a question into the reader’s mind. Makes the reader want to continue to solve the unanswered question. A good trick is to end scenes before the action finishes.
5. Try to avoid adverbs.
6. Limit your use of adjectives.
7. If you’re using italics as internal monologue, write it in first-person, present tense as if it was dialogue.
8. When you’re using third person limited (close third person), the reader knows they are in your characters head, so you can skip much of the italicized thoughts and just say what your character’s thinking.
9. Limit the length of the internal thoughts, especially those in italics.
10. Avoid filter words that create space between the character, like felt, saw, heard. Just use the action. The reader knows the POV character is experiencing it.
11. Use active instead of passive. Replace “to be” verbs with stronger verbs. Get rid of was, were, etc.
12. Limit “ing” words.
13. Watch word repetition. Try not to repeat words or phrases on the same page.
14. Do a word frequency search and eliminate words you use to often throughout the manuscript. We all overuse some words.
15. Avoid using phrases like “started to,” continued to,” “began to.” Just write the action.
16. Try to avoid telling the readers what’s happening and show them instead.
17. Be succinct. Rewrite to make scenes shorter, which will help with pacing.
18. Some of the dialogue feels wooden and unrealistic. There is too much use of dialogue as a vehicle for dumping info.
19. In dialogue, cut unnecessary words and responses, like “okay” and “oh, thanks.”
20. In dialogue, have character fail to answer questions.
21. In dialogue, have characters cut each other off.
22. Try reading your dialogue out loud to improve the cadence.
23. Don’t use characters’ names in dialogue. They know who they are speaking with, and only do it for emphasis, like a mother scolding a child.
24. Eliminate the repetitive dialogue. The reader has already heard it, so don’t repeat it again. Just say, “She related what X told her.,” or “She briefed him on the conversation.”
25. Don’t have characters tell each other things they already know.
26. Lose the niceties in your dialogue and cut right to the important conversation.
27. Cut phrases like the “she knew,” “she thought,” and “she wondered.” They put distance between the reader and the character. Readers already know who is speaking.
28. Spell out numbers from one to one hundred.
29. Always use either the first or last names of suspects. Don’t alternate between the two. It confuses the reader and doubles the names they have to track.

Formatting

1. Manuscript needs to be formatted to industry standards before submitting to agents or publishers. Most agents have interns screen the slush pile and are told to discard anything that doesn’t adhere to the standard or to the specific agent’s submission requirements.
2. Readers need white space on the page. Long blocks of text are unwelcoming and make it hard to follow. Shorten your paragraphs and insert dialogue or even one sentence paragraphs to break up the page. This is especially important at the beginning.
3. Your paragraphs and sentences should have varied lengths. Avoid patterns.
4. Start new paragraphs when new characters or speak when other characters do something.
5. Start chapters one-third of the way down the page, which is seven returns when double-spaced.
6. The Chicago Manual of Style is the standard for novels.

Into Every Life, a Few Snowflakes Must Fall

In this case, I’m talking about first person snowflakes. Confused? Well, I suppose describing life from a snowflakes point of view could feel intensely personal, but also could be a little confusing to write. And that brings me to what I wanted to discuss today. I’ve been writing a new novel from a first person point of view perspective for several weeks. It’s about Theo, a thirteen year old boy living in 1961. It’s trickier than I thought but I’m doing it for a couple of reasons. First, I wanted the story to feel very personal and immediate. If it’s written well, the reader should be seeing and feeling everything from Theo’s perspective. Second was the challenge of experimenting with a very different point of view from my previous couple of novels.

Writing about anything from fifty years ago presents it’s own challenges. Life was very different in 1961. Everyday language, customs, dress, fads, music, technology, politics, travel, and so on. Readers who are knowledgeable or were alive in 1961 will quickly pick up on story elements that are impossible for that time period, like using a cell phone or using a laptop or iPad to jump on the internet. But I’d like to table those issues and focus on writing in the first person. Everything we learn in the novel is filtered through one person, in this case Theo. There’s an internal dialogue that can be observations or reflections, and external dialogue when the character is speaking.

Here’s an example of an internal observation from the novel:
My father’s footsteps got louder, then stopped. His deep voice rolled up the stairs. “Theo, come down here, we want to talk to you.”
We learn from Theo that he hears his father’s footsteps and then his father asking him to come downstairs.

Here’s an example of an internal reflection from the novel:
I wish I could erase the image of my dead grandmother, Nana, standing in her jonnie waving to me at her wake. It all really started three days ago as I lay on my bed trying to count the dead squished mosquito bodies, some outlined in blood, on the ceiling.
In this passage, we learn a little about what Theo is thinking, as he lays on his bed staring at the ceiling.

The power of this writing approach is that it pulls us immediately into the novel. There are at least a couple of drawbacks. First, it’s easy to slip into a third person point of view and have an omniscient narrator who isn’t Theo. So for example, if I wrote: Theo’s Dad worried that his son was being being bullied at school, I’d no longer be writing in the first person, and the effect would be to pull the reader out of the novel and create some confusion.

Another drawback is that Theo can’t know everything that is going on in the story. So it forces the writer to consider carefully how Theo will discover and plan things that will keep the reader engaged and the story moving along. It also means the writer must consider what other story elements have happened that Theo doesn’t yet know about and how will these be brought into the story.

Falling Into Winter

The days are getting shorter and colder, the fireplace hosts sparking embers and dancing flames to warm frozen toes and fingers, and a favorite beverage sits close by ready to warm the insides. The writer sits intensely focused, fingers perched over keys ready to begin the long textual journey. Sounds idyllic, right? But unfortunately, it’s not very realistic.

Let me start again. My fireplace insert needs a part and I won’t be able to use it until Thanksgiving. I’ve got to to pick up some things for supper, and my wife also asked me to get some super glue so I can fix a small stone turtle that she dropped. If I carve out a couple of hours later today for writing and I pour myself a nice merlot, it’s unlikely there’ll be any supper waiting when she gets home.

That’s a long way of saying that finding time to write regularly isn’t always easy especially if you are juggling other responsibilities like children and a job. If you work nine to five during the week, sitting down to write after you eat may be the last thing you feel like doing. Add kids into the mix, and sleep may be higher on your priority list after a long day. So what do you do?

If writing is something that you really want to do, try to set realistic goals. Trying to write five or ten thousand words a week may not be realistic. Writing a thousand words (or 2 pages) may be. Think about what you have to do to set aside a couple of hours of ‘me’ time. Some people do this by getting up early before the chaos of the day begins and writing. Other folks do this by going to the local library (or coffee shop) while the kids are in a library program or playing soccer or over a friends house.

Another way to keep up your level of enthusiasm, learn how to improve your writing and get feedback on your current writing project, is to join a local writing group. Many cities and towns have these and they often meet at the local library. I found out about two groups by inquiring at the circulation desk.