If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.  – Stephen King

 You have all seen writers squinting at their laptops in the café at Barnes and Noble and scribbling away in the little notebooks that everyone knows a good writer carries with them. What you don’t know, unless you are a writer, is that writers don’t need anything in their hands or in front of them to write.  While I have a little red notebook tucked in my purse for those moments when a table and chair in a café or a park bench presents itself, I do some of my best writing in my head walking my English Cocker Spaniel on our daily strolls through the neighborhood.  Yes, I am that lady in the straw hat with the bouncy black dog who looks right through you as you pass her and call out a cheerful hello.  You think that I am very snooty and in reality I don’t even know you are there because I am in the middle of scene from my novel. 

 Scarier still is when you approach me and realize that I’m talking to someone you can’t see. “Must be the dog,” you say, but in your heart you don’t believe it, because the dog is not paying any attention. What I’m really doing is speaking dialogue aloud to see how it sounds. I try not to do this but sometimes I get so caught up in the writing going on in my head that I can’t help myself.  Writers take note of everything no matter where they are: the doctor’s office, the hairdresser, the beach, the ladies room.  About eight years ago, I was in the lobby of the Wang Center in Boston during intermission for the ballet Swan Lake.  A lovely blonde in a classic little black dress walked by me with a tattoo of a long, thick black snake crawling up her arm.  That girl and her snake walked right into the first chapter of MacCullough’s Women.

 Summer is here and lots of you will be entertaining little ones.  I want to recommend a super book to you: Toad Cottages & Shooting Stars by Sharon Lovejoy.  It says it is “Grandma’s bag of Tricks” but it will work for anyone! It contains lots of inexpensive and creative things to do with kids. Enjoy.

If wishes were horses, beggars would ride   English Proverb

 “You have to blog, if you want to market your writing.”   I have been told this repeatedly.  I didn’t actually put my fingers in my ears and say “I can’t hear you, I can’t hear you.” the way my daughter used to do when she was eight but I sure was thinking it and I was NOT blogging,  Then I did what I always do when I’m stumped, I read a book. Actually, I read several books. My favorite was Blogging All-In-One for Dummies by Susan Gunelius. 

Blogging it turns out is just talking on steroids.  I am nothing if not a good talker. Some people will tell you that I have been talking non-stop since I was a toddler. My grandfather once paid me a dime to stop talking! Considered from that angle, blogging was no longer intimidating and became, well, as natural as talking.

 There are of course, rules and best practices to follow.  I went back and reread the March chapter of The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin. This is a great book that I have read three times and given as a gift.  Gretchen tells you how she started her wildly successful blog.

My blog will be about my efforts to become what I have wanted to be since I was a girl─ a writer.  I am sure that I will also include my observations of what I see along the way. I hope you find it worth reading.

 What appeals to you about the blogs that you follow?

If you produce one book, you will have done something wonderful in your life.  —  Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

 And so now we come to the second book in the Lynton Series. Starting Francesca’s Foundlings is proving to be more challenging than I thought it would.  I have the characters: Franny, Brid, Sofia, Neil and Brendan but what to do with them?

“Don’t you work from an outline?” I hear you asking in a somewhat shocked tone.  What you get in response is a hedged answer, “I want to, I should.” If I am really cornered, “Sister told me to.”  Writers fall into two categories, structured and intuitive, according to Walter Mosley in This Year You Write Your Novel.  A structured writer knows the whole story before she begins to write it. The intuitive writer puts the characters in motion and follows them through the pages, scribbling madly in their wake.  The downside of this is that you have days when you just stare at the computer monitor without a clue as to what you should write. (If you had the outline you would at least know what you should be writing.)  But the upside is, your characters can and will surprise you and drag you places that you never intended them to go.

The questions plaguing me this morning is how much about MacCullough’s Women (also known as backstory) does the reader need to know and how quickly should I reveal it to them?