PREPARE IN ADVANCE???

Before I became acquainted with WARA I had already written one and a half books. However, since joining WARA, I have discovered that I’ve done a lot of things backwards or not at all. So that “one and a half” books has become one and a half stories, with books to be forthcoming. As a friend of mine used to say, “Who’d a thunk it?”

I certainly never imagined that there were rules to be followed if you hoped to publish a book. Which necessated changes in how one wrote it. I only thought they were good or bad; either well written or indecipherable. I knew nothing about writing terms, policies, procedures or preparation. I just sat down one day and started putting my stories to paper, which I now know, makes me a pantster! Some of the things my fellow bloggers have, and will be talking about, I ended up doing out of necessity, like research. I had to delve into the facts and figure department in order to not have my characters look and sound stupid to those who knew better. I had to start charting my characters; their age, name, birth date and part in my productions. I began to keep a calendar so that the time would flow realistically, and I could keep track of it throughout the story. And since these will eventually be a trilogy, I had to figure out how to chart everything over the span of three books. (No point in doing things the easy way!)

I started making lists to go back and check this or that detail, or to fix something that I discovered didn’t quite "jive" with the overall picture I wanted to paint. I learned to keep a list of each chapter and a brief sentence of what was in it, so that I could go where I needed to much quicker. I had to brush up on my punctuation and grammar skills, (say aackk), and how to format my writing in order to somewhat resemble a book.

If I had done all these things from the get go, life would have been so much smoother and quicker. So take it from someone who learned to do things the hard way, and now has to pretty much do them all over again. Join a writer’s group, learn the craft first, and save yourself a few headaches along the way.