Let’s talk about writing. Are you a reader or a writer? I know you will all say yes to the reader part. I don’t know any writers who aren’t voracious readers. It’s part of the writer’s package. We read and it stirs us to share our own words and thoughts. By reading, we learn what works and what doesn’t. We learn the grammar rules, develop our voice, and then learn what grammatical rules we can break in creating that voice.
Myself, I LOVE rhetorical devices. I took an awesome course with the wonderful Margie Lawson and got to practice many of them. I think she teaches about 28 of them in her course. And, me, I was up to practice every one of them. I have to frequently rein myself in and delete some of my darling rhetorical devices. It’s usually when I read a piece in my writers critique group that I realize I am overdoing it. They tease me about being too ‘Harlequiny’. Then I have to decide which of my wonderful words or phrases I want to keep and which I will save for another day.
But oh it is so much fun playing with words. I guess that is why I am a writer.
I also love writing in several genres. I think writers sell themselves short when they say they can only write romance or mystery or adult or children’s. Being a writer gives us license to write whatever we want. We may prefer one genre or age group over another, but it is only our own mind that is limiting us.
WHEN HEARTS COLLIDE was my first book published. It is still an ebook but is supposed to be coming out in print soon. The cover is gorgeous so I can’t wait to see it in print. I also have a another couple of romances that I am working on, one contemporary, one medical romance. But let my imagination wander and it will head toward a mystery. I love to come up with a nice, intriguing puzzle especially if it means I can develop some complicated bad guy and find some interesting way to bring him to justice.
But I found that I also love writing children’s stories and have several that I may do something with. From Farley the pig, to Kiriana’s Power, a fantasy, to The Wooden Statue, a goosebumps novel…
I guess I’m a bit ADHD and find I loose interest easily. My creative juices work much better when I have more than one project to work one.
And we should be writing on more than one project. After getting many, many rejections, its nice to be more than a one book wonder and to have something else to offer when that acceptance letter or phone call or email finally comes. And if we keep working on improving our craft and sending it out there, someday, we will get the call, the email, the letter.
With myself, I got the offer for WHEN HEARTS COLLIDE from Soul Mate Publishing in the September of 2011. Then within a couple of days of Halloween I got an offer for GHOSTLY JUSTICE, a paranormal YA, which came out in April of this year. Wasn’t Halloween an apropos time for a contract for a ghost story. Then just before Christmas I got a contract for my women’s suspense, MISSING CLAYTON, due out in July. I also have two more contracts, one for IN HIS FATHER’S FOOTSTEPS, a YA adventure story, and WITHOUT CONSENT, a medical/police thriller, both hopefully out before the end of the year.
It is so much fun to expand our horizons, test our limits, let our imagination go wild. Who knows where you can go? Think it, dream it, live it. One day it will all be yours.
kendrajames4 