I am in the thick of crafting a story. Some days I make a lot of progress. My characters respond. The plot flows like a mighty river. Other days the characters fall flat and the plot gets twisted and hard to understand. And I’m writing children’s books. Writing adult fiction must be a brutal process to wade through.
Yet this is the writing process — full of twists and turns and insurmountable challenges. I love it!
Here are a few meaningful quotes that keep me moving past my first and second drafts to the final copy. I hope they speak to you.
“Plot is people. Human emotions and desires founded on the realities of life, working at cross purposes, getting hotter and fiercer as they strike against each other until finally there’s an explosion—that’s Plot.”
—Leigh Brackett, WD
“The first sentence can’t be written until the final sentence is written.”
—Joyce Carol Oates, WD


I will be praying you make it through the rough spots. For your sake and mine
Thanks, honey. Writing is such an arduous process.
Mood often decides whether the writing process works or not. If you believe you’re getting stuck and things are not working, that will most certainly happen.
Writing is an emotional process. Mood can certainly take writers into a tailspin.
[...] you finish reading a book, ask yourself to sum up the book in a single word. For example, a single word for the book Little Red Riding Hood could [...]
[...] Style: At its heart, voice is about style in the sense of a flow, a rhythm, a cadence to the writing, a vocabulary, lexicon, and slang the author is drawing upon. An author’s voice can be wordy or it can be spare. It can be stylish and magical or it can be wry and gritty. It can be tied to unique locations or it can be almost wholly invented. But whatever the flavor of the writing, a good voice has a recognizable style. [...]