I realized a while back that I’m a writer, an author, but not a blogger. What’s the difference? I cannot spout creative, fabulous first drafts and interesting columns several times a week or even several times a month. If I did, it would take all my writing time and I wouldn’t get any work done on my books.

Writing novels is the kind of writing I really love. For me the excitement in writing happens as I take a wisp of an idea, something intriguing, but not necessarily thought clear through, and I let the idea talk and shape itself. I’m constantly asking the character’s why. Why are you doing that? Why do you care? Why does your story matter? The list of questions stretches out for miles.

When creating a story I’m so interested to find out what’s going to happen next. I usually have a vague idea where the story is going, but no clue what kind of people, towns, houses or flowers we are going to pass to get there. I love it when someone in a story does something out of character and later I find out their actions made complete sense; I just didn’t know all the facts before. It makes the writing process very interesting for me.

However, my very favorite part of writing is the rewrite. My rough drafts are never very good, but I can see the potential. To me it’s like when you find something in the attic, at a garage sale, or in the very back, most dusty part of a shop. You look at the thing you found and can see it’s real value, even though to everyone else it’s just a piece of junk. You know it just needs to be dusted off, fixed, and given a fresh coat of paint. When I get critique pages back covered in red with notes scribbled everywhere I  want to sit down right then and start fixing things. I might not take every suggestion given to me, but when I can take a suggestion and use it to make the story better, even in a small way, that’s very exciting to me. I love the feeling when I’ve finished reworking a scene and I can say, this is tons better than it was to begin with.

Previously, I had what I call a fake blog. I wrote things once in a while, however, no one could comment. I wondered whether having a real blog was a good idea since I knew it wouldn’t be my main focus. I love writing way more than blogging, so I probably wouldn’t post things often enough to keep it interesting. I decided I wanted to be able to hear from my readers. I’ll never be a real blogger, which I’m fine with, but a blog seemed like a good way to let you know what I’ve been doing and hear from you.