Oops! My secret is out now! I'll confess - I've had some help writing the Sonrise Stable series - a ghost writer.
Get it? My cat, Lacey is white, so "ghost." :)
It's okay, my daughters usually didn't appreciate my sense of humor either!
Lacey did her best to write herself into a story, but when I pawsed to read it (sorry, couldn't resist!) I saw that she had made herself the heroine, and I had to delete all her work. Maybe she'll find her way into another book!
But, back to the topic of this post. Are there really any "secrets" to good writing?
Life experience, godly inspiration, and an insatiable desire to learn anything and everything have helped me improve as a writer.
Over the past ten years, I've read many books on the art and craft of writing. Often, I see the advice that you should write every day. That's not something I've ever done or plan to do. I write best when the ideas are bouncing around so furiously in my head that I have to write them down or they will drive me insane!
Sometimes, when I start writing, the ideas flow faster than I can write. I wrote the first half of the series longhand, with pen and paper, and had my youngest daughter type my chicken scratches into the computer. At the time, I had a fixation on Zebra fine-point, black ink pens. Those particular pens seemed to make the ideas flow onto the paper more smoothly. When my daughters all left home, I forced myself to write, even the first drafts, on the computer.
Another "secret" to good writing is to be able to separate yourself from the writing. I pour my heart into my stories, but I can appreciate critiques of my writing without viewing them as an attack on me personally.
I encourage you, whatever your age, to write the story God has given you!
