Until my book is written

Dearest Blog Friends,

I'm a year late on getting my new book finished. For all the obvious reasons, I have to concentrate on it now and until it's completed. I'm finally doing good work on it, but I have to buckle down a lot more now.

I hate closing down the blog until this period is over, but I think I have to do it for my own sanity. It's true that I could probably just post a daily nothing and leave the cafe open for everybody else to chat, but that doesn't feel right to me. I'd rather put up a "Temporarily Closed" sign.

This doesn't change anything else, by the way, in regard to getting to see some of you. Beth is coming soon, and I can't wait! That will be such a wonderful visit. Maybe I'll drag her to a coffee shop and force her to do "tandem writing" with me. And I'll see her and Andi and Kimberly and maybe others when I "do" Writers Retreat Workshop this spring.

Do NOT hesitate to email me at any time. I'm not going incommunicado, I'm just going incommuniblogo.

I love you guys. I don't like having the blog open for extended periods when I can't interact with you. I originally thought that this current semi-absence of mine would last only for a week or so, but I can see now that I need a lot more time. I won't be gone forever. It will probably be a few months, and then I'll re-open. You'll know when it happens, because you'll hear the great sigh of relief coming from the midwest.

Let's stay open for the rest of today and tonight, and then I'll turn the lights low.

I'm coming back. Count on that!

Much love,
Nancy

I Can Has Blog?

This is Katiebird's handiwork. She knows us well.

Writing Lesson, Repetition #316

There are writing lessons I have to relearn with every book or story.

One of them is: Sometimes, if I catch one of my characters telling another character about something dramatic that happened, I have to delete that scene and actually write the scene WHERE THE THING HAPPENED! I learned it again last week when I wrote a little scene where one cowboy tells another that some fence has been cut. But where was the action? Where was the emotion? T'warn't none. So I deleted all that and wrote the scene in which the cut fence is actually discovered by the woman who lives on the ranch . MUCH better. There's surprise happening right there in the moment, and there's the emotion of first-person experience instead of the second-person telling a third person. And because there's true action in that scene, it leads naturally to action and emotion in the next scene.

Sometimes characters have to tell each other things; you can't literally *show* everything, but whenever there's a choice, readers want showing, not telling. And I'll tell you a secret: you're not really a fiction writer untill you can write those scenes--the ones where things happen-- as they happen.

Dear Nancy, Show, don't tell. Duh. Yours truly, Nancy.

Weekend Edition

We get around a lot on this blog. We've spent a day in at a coffee shop in Paris, another day at a cafe in Florence, and guess where we are going this weekend? Greece! Enjoy the sunshine, the food, the wine, and the company. Oh, yes, and the coffee.

Keepin' it real

Photo credit

That is not Kansas. I think it's Alberta, Canada. But if you take away the mountains, it looks and feels a lot like cattle ranching territory in my state and in the book I'm writing. Things in the book are finally working out well, and all the coincidences that happen when things "click" are happening on schedule. It just so happens that my son is spending the winter working on one of his dad's ranches, so he calls me on his way to and fro and I ask him things like, "Are they using high-tensile barbed wire these days? How many strands do they use, five or six? What about the posts, are they wood or metal now?" It has been a lot of years since I spent time on a ranch and things change, even there. And when I'm living in the middle of something, but not writing about it, I can miss the details. When I was married to his dad I saw plenty of fences, and I have a picture of them in my mind's eye, but I can't be sure that picture is still accurate--or ever was, for that matter. I have to ask.

Fortunately, it turns out that my son has a writer's eye for detail. Not only is he patient with his mom's questions, but he answers with the most wonderful minutiae, the kinds of things that make scenes feel real. Today, for instance, he described a gate, down to the kind of latch that closes it. He told me how he feeds the cattle every morning, how many pastures he handles and how long it takes to do it, how many cattle there are in each pasture, and how he has to go looking for a few of them sometimes when they don't show up at the sound of his feed truck. Certain things really make my ears perk up, as when I thought to ask him, "When you're counting, do you count the cows and the calves?" and he said, "No, we never count the calves." I'm glad to know that! It could make a difference with a reader who knows about such things. If I write, "she counted only the mama cows," that reader will nod to herself, and think, "that's right," and feel secure with me, the author.

Here's to keeping it real, in fiction and in life. And to observant sons.

Chapter One

I so have to laugh! This is a scene in my book! Only without the catz.

If you're not addicted to Icanhascheezburger, you are not the cat's meow.

Welcome, MRI readers!

We may have some visitors coming over from the Mystery Readers International website, so I want to post a special welcome to them. (The reason for the visits is that I did an interview, conducted by my friend and sister mystery writer, Carolyn Hart, and it's posted there.) If you "regulars" spot any MRI members in the comments, please offer them a friendly wave and a howdy. And if they're lurking? Then we'll smile and give 'em a wink.