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We’ve reached the weekend, this week has flown by for me, and for all the “eight to fivers” I’m sure your glad the for the break from work but the only day I really take off is Sunday. I’ve decided that the underlying success and challenge of being a writer is finding balance in everything that I do. Since I develop plots, characters, and the basic aspects of a story in my head first, when it comes bubbling out, my proposed schedule goes totally out the window. Sometimes I feel like I’m going to explode and everything pours out on the computer screen. I don’t eat and I don’t sleep. My husband has to remind me to take breaks and bring me food at least twice a day or I would totally forget. I have to write because I have to let the story out. It’s compulsive. I have no sense of time unless I happen to see the clock or hear the time on the radio. I would write even if no one read my work, but I’d really rather readers find my books and enjoy reading them.

Thanks for sharing your week with me. Keep on reading.

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Thursday’s I write but have to get email and the Spider Solitaire put aside. I’m trying to do what one of my mentors does. She spends the morning doing business and email. She has two desks and computers in her spacious office at a nearby university. One desk has internet access – that’s for the morning. Then, she moves to the desk without internet access for the afternoon writing. I have a pc and a laptop, but need to use the ergonomic keyboard because of a carpal tunnel problem in the past. My problem – pretending I don’t have access to distractions.

My best solution to disciplining myself is to change scenery whenever possible. They don’t have wifi at the library. I purposely don’t have the password to use the internet at my favorite coffee shop. Getting out of the house and away from distractions like dishes, laundry, and cleaning is always a help when I am under a deadline for a manuscript.

The alternative is writing late at night while everyone is asleep and no one calls me. That schedule, of course, throws my schedule off for the next day since I need to catch up on the zzzzz I missed.

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It’s already Wednesday. The decision to move into the third bedroom and have my own office for writing was a process. Our daughter had book shelves mounted on two walls. What books she hadn’t taken with her I boxed up and gathered my books from all over the house to this central place. Getting organized and staying that way is always a challenge. I usually let things stack up on the table next to my computer desk until it’s like an archeology dig to find what I need. My husband says that I spend a quarter of my time cleaning up and putting things away and filing research, but only after I pass the frustration point of not being able to find anything. Then, all I want to do is take my laptop to the coffee shop to get away from my office. I can’t concentrate when this are a mess. If I can’t focus, then I can’t write.

Speaking of not being able to write, I think for me it’s never a problem of writer’s block. It’s a matter of several ghostwriting projects and my own books going at the same time. It’s really difficult to write in the different voices of my clients and then shift gears from one book to another. Overload happens. I tend to immerse myself in each project when I’m working on it. Then, when I need to move on to another book it isn’t just a matter of putting things away in a folder and opening up the next project folder. I have to do something to change my mind set for each one.

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People ask me what it's really like to be a writer. I mentioned yesterday that I wear more than one hat as a writer. When my kids were growing up, the biggest challenge was finding any time to write at all. Now that I have six adult children with grandchildren there is a different set of challenges.

It is always a balancing act. The hardest thing about that balancing act has been, and in some ways continues to be people treating me like I actually have a job. Since I don't get up and go to an office everyday that is somewhere else, friends and family members tend to treat me like I'm just home hanging out playing on the computer or watching television. I had to learn how to take myself seriously when I could walk across the hall from my bedroom and sit in my pajamas half of the day in our home office.

At first, my husband and I shared a small office in one of the bedrooms where a child had formerly called home. The biggest problem with that was that we like different types of music. My husband likes to focus in total silence when he is writing his column or working on a consulting proposal. I like to listen to the radio in the background. I also talk to myself. He never knew when I was talking to him or myself. He would answer and I'd say "What?"

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Hello to all you Novelspotters. My name is Dianne G. Sagan. I am an author, inspirational speaker, and ghostwriter. I’ve been full time writing for about four years and loving it, even with the challenges of balancing all the demands of writing, speaking, and the business end.
I’ve always been a story teller from the time I was a child. I loved reading and got the bug for writing from an awesome high school English teacher who taught us the nuts and bolts of writing a paper. I don’t think I really thought about being a professional writer until later, but I learned to love the process. I was a history major in college and was one of those students who loved essay question tests. I realize I’m in a tiny minority of people who think that is the way to go.
When I became a mother of three small children, we used to go to the library all the time and I read to them daily. Then, I started writing stories for them. Some stories were about them. I became a single mom, working and raising the kids alone, so decided to put off any aspirations of writing books until later. If I had it to do over again, I would make some time to write every day.

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I've had a lot of fun sharing with everyone here this week. It went by fast! I've enjoyed every minute of it, and I hope you have, too. I'll start today off by wishing my daughter, Melanie, a happy birthday. She's 26 today, and just had her second child on the 17th of last month. She's already lost over 25 lbs. just by breastfeeding. Lucky girl. She started off petite, but gained a lot of weight over her pregnancy.

On to the future. I've been thinking about writing my next book. I'm thinking it might be a detective novel. This time I think I'll tap into my masculine side and have a strong male detective with a lot of quirks. I haven't sorted out the plot yet. Maybe he'll have a female captain. I don't know yet if he'll be a freelance detective or one who works for the police department. That's the thing about writing a book; you can make it any way you want it to be. Maybe I'll ask for readers' input on my blog. That might be interesting. I'd love to hear others' ideas about what they like or don't like in a story. I personally like a lot of action. I don't like too many lulls. I also like a good love scene at least once in a book. I like it slow and not too graphic or hokey. Right now I'm reading Meg Gardiner's The Memory Collector. It has an almost love scene that is really beautiful, but gets interrupted by an urgent phone call. Hopefully later on in the book the two lovers will be able to finish what they started.

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I just got Deadly Lucidity back for one more edit. The last time I only found two mistakes. I'm so tempted to do some re-writing! After you're read your own book a half a dozen times in editing it's tempting to change things around a bit, just for your own sanity. But it's actually perfect the way it is. I just have to read through it one more time to make sure it's perfect, with no typos or anything. Once it's in the stores you can't fix it anymore. So I will spend about two days slaving at my computer to make sure my work is absolutely perfect for all you readers out there.

I'd like to talk about how fun it was to write Quantum Earth. It was my first full length novel. It was more like playing than work. I got to write about two lovers trying to keep their affair a secret from their co-workers to little success. It turned out everyone knew about them anyway. I set it in Humboldt County on the north coast of California where I live, although they do some traveling (like to San Francisco) for their seminars. Noah is one of the characters, and he is a trance channeler. He gets up on stage and basically speaks with loved ones who have passed on. I have been to trance channelers, so I had first hand knowledge about this. That was a lot of fun because I got to make up stories about the relationships between the living and the deceased. I let my imagination run wild, yet kept a good perspective on what might really be said and done in these sessions. There is a very powerful scene in which one of the participants is a born-again Christian who believes this is just a show put on to make money and fool people. The man becomes violent and people get hurt. I've never heard of this happening, but my imagination told me it was a possibility. I could see it really happening.

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Well, it's Friday. Now the wonderful weekend is coming up. I'll be waiting to hear if my new book, Deadly Lucidity will be published soon. When it is, it will be available on amazon and http://allthingsthatmatterpress.com. I'm very excited about it. You can't imagine how great it feels to have your baby go out into the world and see how it does. I've also been getting a lot of traffic on my blog http://earthwalkr.wordpress.com. Thank you to everyone who has made a visit there. It's kind of an eclectic site with all sorts of different things on it. I even have an interview with a trance channeler.
Since it's coming out any day now I think I'll tell you a little more about Deadly Lucidity. It took me about three months to write. It was actually finished last August, but my editor couldn't get to me until late December. That was a bit frustrating. But that's how it goes in this business. I wanted to create a strong female character; someone who is taken out of her everyday life and put in a scary situation. I also gave her some foibles. She has an anxiety disorder, which makes it even harder for her to deal with all the action that comes at her. I also modeled her a little after myself. This way I could get inside her head more easily.

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I believe anyone with a ninth grade education could turn out a decent book. You don't have to have any special talent, just an undying flicker of imagination and a love for what you're doing. And always remember that people much less talented than you have gotten books published. I'm sure you've read some of their books in your lifetime. I know I certainly have! This simple fact kept me going many a time when I felt like my story wasn't good enough. But you don't have to write a prizewinner, especially your first time out of the gate.

I'd advise you to get as many books on writing from the library as you can. There's no need to spend a lot of money. You could also get a subscription to Writers' Digest. It's a good magazine with lots of different kinds of articles that fit anyone. You might even have a library big enough to carry them. Then there are your online resources. Google writing and you'll find a slew of writing websites and blogs. Go through as many as you can, and select a few that you would like to get on a regular basis. You can find everything from general writing to more specific niche writing. I could go on about the fundamentals of writing, but you can find that anywhere, so I will go on with my own personal story, which I hope will be somewhat inspirational for you.

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How do we write? How do we come up with an idea for a book? Well, for my first book, Quantum Earth, I was deeply interested in what the Mayan calendar says is the end of all time, which is supposed to happen on the Solstice in the year 2012. That's all I had to start with. Then I created a strong female character. I wanted her to take the lead in the story. Then I added a secondary male character to balance things out. Shauna and Hawk also had a secret romance. I liked that. Then I had them being the leaders of a metaphysical group looking into all the major disasters happening around the world, like tsunamis, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions. I was writing this around the time of Katrina. I gathered some more characters, one by one, with different personalities, but with the same goal: to find out if the Mayan calendar prophesies had any merit.
At first I didn't have an idea for what genre this book would be under. I don't think that's important until you get into your characters and story. Basically you're just winging it with your imagination. Just let your imagination take over. Don't stop and think about all the little details. Just get it down on paper. Quantum Earth ended up being a paranormal thriller. Once I had the story set up, I realized that's what I wanted it to be and ran with it.

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I like Tuesdays. It's the day after Monday, so we've gotten that out of the way. Yesterday I talked about my younger experiences, but today I'm going to fast-forward to when I first started getting serious about writing as a career.

I was taking a creative writing class at the local community college. I had 5 children at the time, so I only took two classes at a time. It was nice because this was an evening class, so my husband at the time could watch the kids while I was gone. There were about a dozen of us in the class. What I took away with me from that experience was that I started to believe I wasn't actually such a bad writer. I got some much needed self-confidence. I remember getting a zing! go through my body whenever I thought about writing as a career. I knew that with my kids still small I didn't have any extra time to devote to writing, but I kept it in my heart that some day something really great could happen.

All during this time I was delivering babies at home. I thought a lot about what grist for the mill these experiences were. Even though I still haven't written about birth, I think the intensity of the birth experience has helped me with my writing. Birth is powerful and rewarding on so many levels. It's a part of who I was and who I have become.

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Dear Readers,

I'd like to introduce myself to you all. My name is Julie Achterhoff and I have one published book titled Quantum Earth, and another book titled Deadly Lucidity, which is due for publication this week. I'll be talking about my books later in the week, but first I wanted to just get to know you and let you get to know me.

I remember when I first learned to read. The book was Go Dogs, Go. I think we all remember that one. I turned out to be a good reader at a very young age, so I liked doing it. It was an exciting thing for me.

My first major love was Stephen King when I was in my early teens. Carrie blew me away. I remember even then feeling a bit of jealousy over it. The writing seemed so perfect. I wanted to be able to write like that. I also loved H.P. Lovecraft and Interview with a Vampire. I was hopelessly addicted to scary stuff. I would stay up into the wee hours scaring myself to death. Then I'd have nightmares on top of it all.

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All novelists believe that they actually know what is going to happen in their book. Let me tell you a little secret. Okay, it's a big secret. If you really truly know every single thing that is going to happen in your fiction book before you write it that probably means it's not very good. Great writing is circuitous. A good story is not a straight line. Inspired work is a process of discovery. It needs to unfold for the reader and before it can do that in a way that is intriguing and thought provoking and entertaining it needs to be all that for the author. Research and outlines and character strength and flaws are all great but they don't beat the unexpected turn that a story can take where you are buzzing along wondering where it will all end.

It's okay to think you know everything but it's not so incredible if you really do. So, it's super cool to have a precise ending before you even begin and to know who the bad guy is. But an unexpected character who runs off with the plot taking you to places you never even imagined your story going is ABSOLUTE gold.

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What will your issue be in your book? Your deepest truth.

Are you upset about human trafficking? Drugs? Domestic Abuse? The fact that criminals are running the medical industry? These are my concerns in RESURRECTION DIVA, the fact that I wrap it all around a gorgeous and wicked woman with ambitions to be an actress/singer, drug addiction, a sexy psychic, the S & M dungeon culture and the irresistable lure of Los Angeles voodoo doesn't take away from the fact that real issues are at stake.

Illusion vs. Truth - what will win out? Illusion will, especially if it has a deep running vein of the truth. People like that. That's why we laugh at jokes, we recognize a truth and it makes us laugh. This is why research is so very important. Sure, you can make things up but you'll find the foundation of actually knowing what you are writing about gives your work the ring of truth and it is only natural that your readers will respond to that.