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I love words. To be more specific, I love the emotions words can evoke when strung together well. While I have been an avid reader my whole life, I am still taken by surprise when words move me to tears,cause me to laugh out loud, or incite anger. Imagine my even greater surprise when my own writing made me cry. I was minding my own business and going about editing my yet-to-be published novel. I had been away from the book for a while to create “mental distance” from it so I could attempt to look at it with a fresh eye. With red pen in hand, I was correcting typos, tightening sentences, culling out cliches, and searching for a different word to describe “delicious food” (not an easy task I might add.) One of my sentences stopped me . . . with head bent over paper, big tears plopped down and made the red ink edit marks run. I think that was the moment I thought my book might be worth more than the paper it was written on.
My book is In Search of Beef Stroganoff.
This blog will be dedicated to the journey that started with my husband telling me for 30 years that I should write a book, to where I am today with a finished (well, almost finished) novel. Don’t worry, I won’t bore you with the details of the 28 years where I didn’t write anything beyond thank you notes and documents for work. What I will share are the lessons I learned, random musings about the process of writing, where I found good information for writers, and what I learn while figuring out how the hell I am going to get my book published.
The first lesson I learned is that once you have a solid idea for a book, the writing part is really fun. The not-so-fun part is the editing. No, I take that back. It is fun to take an okay sentence, rework it, and then revel in the sense of accomplishment when it becomes a great sentence. It is exhilerating is when someone else reads the sentence and thinks it is great too. Now that is a writer’s version of shot of vitamin B-12. Like an addict, a writer craves positive feedback and the only way to get it is by making the writing as strong as it can be. Unfortunately, that means also hearing negative feedback and not taking it like a knife to the heart.
So . . . the search begins for me to find a way to publish In Search of Beef Stroganoff. Hop in. I could use the company.
Robin Coyle 