Inside my Mind...

Welcome to a special edition of my blog.  If you followed me last week, you might remember that I am involved in a group of writers that are doing a rolling blog.  The topic of our posts is "Getting Inside the Writer's Mind".  Scary place, my mind...

But first, let me please give a very big Thank You to my good friend, Kris Pearson who invited me to take part in this blog hop.  I absolutely love your books, as you well know, and I'm looking forward to reading your work in progress, More Than Money when it's released.  

You can find out more about Kris and her writing on her website http://www.krispearson.com

Back to my mind and what you will find in it.  Mostly, you'll find a multitude of characters, mostly fictional, some real. They all have their own little space and only get together if I tell them to (ya, right).  I will admit that I often catch myself talking to them (sometimes out loud, but that doesn't often happen in public!). I will also admit that if you have ever had a conversation with me, at some point I have totally not been paying any attention to what you are saying (sometimes not even to what I am saying; not something I recommend), however I'm sure most of you already figured this out by the glazed look in my eyes and my repeated 'uh, huh' and 'oh really, that's nice' and the vague nodding of my head.  Sorry.  But don't take it personal, I do it EVERYONE. And I must say that it's not always because the people in my head are more exciting than what you are saying, it's just that I'm trying to figure out an important plot point or how to get myself or my characters out of some horrible situation I've written them into. And I love to figure out the seemingly impossible.  I absolutely love having the light bulb moment that not only is a surprise to me but hopefully to my readers.  But talking to these characters does exactly get a novel written.

Since I consider myself a new writer, I'm still trying to figure out my 'method' to writing a novel.  So I've taken a bunch of different methods and gelled them into something that works for me.  In the writing world, I'm what you call a 'pantser'.  No, this doesn't mean I go around and pull down unsuspecting peoples pants, but rather I 'write by the seat of my pants'.  I find that too much planning kills my creativity. However, I do need to plan something, otherwise I write and write and nothing happens...or everything happens.  Either way, it doesn't work very well, so I use a few things to get the gist of my story line before I put pen to paper...or fingers to keyboard as the case my be.  

I ask myself questions about my characters to learn more about them.  Obvious questions like name, hair and eye colour, body type and height, but also questions like 'What is their biggest fear?', 'When is the character most at ease?', 'When are they most ill at ease?', What is the character's biggest accomplishments?' and my personal favourite, 'What is the character's darkest secret? and does anyone know about it?'.  I've found these questions and many more in various writing books and on the internet and I've even managed to come up with a few of my own.  I've discovered I learn an awful lot from these questions and by asking them, I get great ideas about what could happen in the story. I then jot down bullet points for the ideas that come to me and use mind maps for working through problems that arise.  By the time I sit down to write, I have a pretty good idea as to what will happen, but I'm also open to any ideas that come up while I write the story.

Like I said, I'm still new at this and I love hearing about how other writer's write/plan their books.  Kris Pearson has a fantastic way of planning, featuring a piece of paper, a curtain and a calender.  Be sure to check out her method. Here's the link to her blog 
http://krispearson.com/blog/2014/01/the-one-piece-of-paper-method


Next week, Annie Seaton will let us into her mind.  Annie lives on the edge of the South Pacific Ocean on the east coast of Australia and she is fulfilling her lifelong dream of writing, and is delighted to discover that readers lover reading her stories as much as she loves writing them. Annie lives with her own hero of many years. Their two children are now grown up and married, and two beautiful grandchildren have arrived. Now they share their home with "Bob" the dog and two white cats. 

Her debut full length novel, Holiday Affair, a contemporary romance set in the South Pacific was released as part of Entangled Publishing’s Indulgence line in March 2012 and was an Amazon, and Barnes and Noble bestseller. Since then Italian Affair, Outback Affair, Dangerous Desire and Tangling with the CEO have been published by Entangled in 2013. Annie has more books lined up for 2014. When she is not writing she can be found in her garden or walking on the beach... or most likely on her deck overlooking the ocean, a chilled glass of wine in hand as the sun sets.

I look forward to 'listening' in on Annie's secrets.  You can find them at http://annieseatonromance.com