BEACH WRITING:The Genre Whisperer

EVERYTHING YOU’VE ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT GENRES…But Were Afraid to Ask 

          (Whispered conversation between two young ladies recently overheard in a library bathroom…)
          “Do you know anything about, you know…what they’re talking about in there?”
          “No. I’m pretty inexperience when it comes to that kind of stuff.”
          “Me too.”
          “Is there some sort of book or something that would explain everything?”
          “You mean like an illustrated how-to manual?”
          “Yeah.”
          “Not that I know of. But I’ve heard some of the older girls talking.”
          “And?”
          “I think they’re talking like they know, but they really don’t know.”
          “So how do you learn?”
          “I guess you just learn by doing it…”

          No, these young ladies were not talking about the facts of life. They were aspiring authors attending their first mystery writers’ meeting. Words like genre and sub-genre and novella had been bandied about like bits of gossip dropped at a high-society cocktail party, all followed by a knowing look and responded to with an I’ll-pretend-I-know-what-you’re-talking-about-even-though-I’m-clueless nod. It might surprise you to learn that these two seemingly unrelated topics do have a lot in common.

To Blog or Not To Blog…That Is the Question

I just did the math…over the course of the life of this blog (still a “baby” at 18 months old), I have written 162 blog posts.  I’ve tried my best to post three times a week.  So at an average of 900 words a post, that equals 145,800 words.  That’s two-and-one-half books.  How many books have I written in that same period of time?  ZERO!  So it occurs to me if I am going to be successful in this business I had best put fingers to keyboard and write more books and less blogs. 

So please bear with me as my posts are a bit erratic over the next few weeks as I try to set the fulcrum at just the right spot to balance writing and blogging.  But rest assured there is plenty of BITCh (that’s Butt In The CHair) time going on here!  I’ve typed THE END to a novella, which is about 20,000 words or about 1/3 (maybe a wee bit less) the size of a novel.  I’m on the deep editing stage.  It should be off to my critique partners by the end of the month, then on to an editor then released into the world.  I don’t mean to be a tease, but here is the opening line to Behind the Blue Door:  230 Periwinkle Lane:

“You’ll never guess what happened to Mudge!”

Hate to keep you guessing but I’m hurrying to get it done.  I promise.  I'll be back soon with another blog post.