Thursday, March 7, 2013

I'm Back


     

     I took a long break from my blog: life, family, weather and lots of travel got in the way. Then it became harder and harder to get back to it. How do you start after three months away?  

     Last week my very good friend presented me with an entree.  She told me that her adult daughter, a wonderful, burgeoning writer, had asked what happened to Florence's Blog?  She said she missed it.  She said she was interested in what I had to say about writing and linking short stories into a novel!  That gave me an incentive to start up again.

     But what to say?

     My writing teacher suggested I should start with what I found useful about writing a blog that focuses on linking short stories. So here's my list of what I like about blogging, and what I hope to offer other people through it:

1.   Blogging makes me concentrate on the linkages in my story/novel.  It was through my blogs that I realized I needed at least one family story for each decade between 1941, when the novel starts, and 2012, when it ends. Otherwise the gaps were too huge. Other novels in linked short stories would have to have another kind of thread going throughout, but you always need a thread.
  
2.  Blogging makes me think about story arc...not just the individual story, but the arc of the novel from one story to the next. If I haven't done it already, I need to drop in references to former events and characters in other, earlier stories.

3.  Blogging pushes me forward.  When I was writing a blog each week, it made me think actively about my writing, and my novel.  How much was already written?  How much was there still to write?  If I'm not producing I have nothing to write about.

     So now I am ready to put myself out there again.  I am anxious to finish the first draft (almost there, and more about that next time).  I am looking forward to posting regularly over the next months.

      I'm back.

     

       

     


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