Tootling Along

Some days are just plain ordinary days that don't bring any special discoveries and no surprises, yet those days are just as precious in our lives and one with all sorts of rewards. Today is such a day, but as I look back over the past few days I think of all the things I've learned.

For instance, we had a wonderful speaker at our monthly writer's meeting who showed us how using astrology and sun signs can help us understand our characters better. I've never been one for following sun signs or horoscopes, but our speaker had us do some workshops using horoscopes and lo and behold I found myself delving deeper into my charater. This is definitely a source I will use again to better understand where my charters are coming from and where they're going.

Then I learned that I must tighten up on some of my writing. I got a wonderful rejection letter that spelled out what my weaknesses and strengths are. Point of view is something I've been rather sloppy about, changing from the hero's pov to the heroine's pov. It's fun to make that transition quickly from one paragraph to the next. You can fully exploit what the characters are feeling especially in a love scene, but though I may enjoy it, a reader might become confused by the changing povs. My new goal is to really pay attention to that. I think my writing might be stronger as a result of it. It's easy to get sloppy, but if you want your writing to become stronger, you have to always be mindful of what you're doing.

So that's my learnin's for now. I expect every day I'll go forward, learning and doing better. After all I've only been writing for 30 years and you can't learn everything in that amount of time.