B.L. Hewitt's Blog: Seriously...

‘How to Read a Book’ by Charles Van Doren & Mortimer Adler...Seriously! My Writing Guild recently suggested that every writer should read it. I truly wish I hadn’t. Although it might have its merits as a writer’s tool, it really messes with a readers mind. It will take me weeks to forget all that and get back to just reading a good book for my own enjoyment. A writer needs to pay attention to point of view, voice and the author’s intent, but I am a visual reader and want to just enjoy the experience.
My sister reads in ‘snippits’ that is she can start a book and after a few chapters, put it down and go tend to other things. She may not pick it up again for days or even a week, and just continue until she puts it down again. That would drive me absolutely crazy!
A few days ago I was just getting into India and A,J.’s latest mind-bending case in Bo Bremmer’s, ‘Baby Snatchers’ and the screen on my kindle flashed white. WTF!! After an hour with the Amazon techies, my kindle was pronounced officially dead. With over 100 unread books on there, it would be any avid reader’s nightmare. And even though in the logical part of my brain I knew that the words would still be there for me when my new device arrived...the other side of my brain is anxious because I feel like I might be missing something in the interim.
No ‘snippits’ for me. I like to get comfy in my wingback with a cup of tea or glass of wine (depending on the genre) and let myself flow into the story. If the book is really good...my chair is just off set, as I watch the characters unfold their tale of conflict and suspense. And I don’t want to put it down until those conflicts are resolved.
So Seriously, please...do not pick up ‘How to Read at Book’. Just pick up a good book...and read!

Once Upon a Time...

Four great words that give a writer the freedom to ...Be anyone...Be anywhere...Do anything in any fantasy world they create. Oops...Maybe not.
Last night, I reluctantly removed myself from my small bastion of creativity, where I've been stoically attempting to complete the final book in a three book series, to attend my writers Guild’s monthly meeting. Thinking the program would be about compacting our paragraphs, I prepared my own rebuttal.
I was not really surprised when John, our newly elected guild president, decided that a lengthy oration (he’s really good at those) on the three publications that he considers to be the Holy Trinity of writing. First was the book on grammar he kept from his high school days, Warriner’s English Grammar and Composition, How to Read a Book, by Adler and Van Doren and The First Five Pages by Noah Lukeman, would be more beneficial. The first and most important book, of course, has been out of print for years. It figures. The second and third on John’s list. I have read already. But I found that Betsy Lerner’s Forest for the Trees, and Stephen King’s On Writing, provided more of an epiphany for me.
But all of that is beside the point. I did all of the usual and expected things, applauded the presentation, took a few moments to speak with fellow writers, exchanged some contact information with new attendees... Blah blah blah. It’s one I was walking out the door that that sort of Eureka moment hit me. Why, could I not just go back to Once Upon a Time. What happened to that spontaneous, jump in with both feet, ready for the adventure , girl I used to be? The sun was out there shining, but not on my face. Trees were falling in the forest and I was not there to hear them. I needed to go back to a time when writing was fun for me.
So if all the lengthy diatribe about the rules of creative writing, last night taught me anything, it was this.
I am such a schmuck, and taking myself way too...Seriously.

Whew! Long week...which I spent in the company of Vampires and Villains, my favorite kind of company.
J. R Ward is at it again with her newest the Black Dagger Brotherhood books you . The Fallen Angles series. If you liked will love these seriously...hot vamps. Ward never leaves anything to the imagination with her sexy, not so lovable bloodsuckers. Blood and sex, absolutely NO sparkles here. Then there is Blood Gospel, the first book in James Rollings, Order of the Sanguine series. Christians beware these vamps have ties to the Vatican. Great stuff.
Then back to the simi-real world with Jennifer Hillier's Creep and Freak. I wonder...do author's live vicariously through their characters? Yikes...Guess I don't really don't want to go there.
I also had a close encounter in the jungles of Vietnam in a veterans’ memoir, got a peek at the first chapter of a spy thriller with the ‘speak geeks’ at the Presidio and went deeper into a werewolf romance, more Jacob Black than Lon Chaney. (All as yet unpublished works from my writer’s guild critique group.)
Seriously...I am ready for a rest...
Now I can kick back for the week-end and leisurely get back to finishing my own tale of murder and mayhem.

I’ve never been a blogger, nor have I ever really followed anyone else’s blog. Who has time... With all the social media sites independent writers are supposed to monitor on a daily basis? I’m a writer, not a blogger...

But, here I am.

Writing is by its nature, a solitary endeavor. One envisions a lone figure, hunched over and furiously tapping out the beginning of the bestseller, on a lamp lit keyboard. Right? Like the jean clad picture of Grace Metalious on the back cover of Peyton Place. Maybe.
I usually spend a good deal of time talking to experts and researching facts for my upcoming projects. So it’s not like I lack human contact. But sometimes I do find myself talking, late at night to my ceiling fan. Running lines of dialogue until they make sense enough to write them down, tossing back and forth from myself to myself a new plot line or a new twist. (please tell me other writers do the same and I am not a nutter) Or as mentioned above, clicking furiously on my keyboard, to get a particularly good thought down before it drifts away. So, why my blogging?

Perhaps it’s just a new method of procrastination, or a way to clear my mind and solve my present conundrum. Let me explain. I really dislike serial writing. When choosing a book to read and review I try to stay clear of those that indicate it’s the first in a series, or a serial. And yet I find myself trying to complete the third book in a series. Now granted all three books are stand alone. Each story resolves the dilemmas of the characters involved and each new book starts with a new mystery, but how do you divorced yourself from characters it has taken you over 1000 pages to develop? It’s somehow like saying goodbye for the last time to an old friend. And you want to do it just right.
Recently I read two different books, in completely different genres, both having endings that perhaps I would not have written myself, (given my pension for neat and tidy endings) but were nonetheless perfect. Alice Close Your Eyes by Averil Dean and Tankbread by Paul Mannering. Oh, what I would give for such an ending.

I never really understood writer’s block, what that meant exactly... Now I do.

I have paced and paced, and plotted and re-plotted. I have sought out the opinions of my Writers Guild critique group, friends and family. I have written and I have edited and still have not found the perfect way to put Mac & CiCi McConnell on the shelf for good. I’m beginning to see why Martin can’t seem to finish the Game of Thrones.

Well, I suppose it’s time to stop immersing myself in Netflix’s endless offerings of two star horror films and get on with it.

Seriously...