Kay Ellington's Blog - Posts Tagged "texas-novels"

Is The Paragraph Ranch a real place?
Happy Friday from The Paragraph Ranch:

I've had several folks say they'd like to visit The Paragraph Ranch and have asked me if it's a real place. That's a good question.

The Paragraph Ranch is based on the farm where my family lived until I was six-years-old. It was a ramshackle of a place that my parents received as a part of their cotton farming lease.

But for a kid it was pretty amazing. I am the youngest of four children and each morning the older three would walk down the dirt road to the bottom of the hill and open the gate and wait for the bus.
If it was arctic outside--and I mean it had to be arctic--all six of us would pile into the single cab of the pickup truck and ride down to the gate and wait for the big kids' ride to school.

The half a mile to the bottom of the hill wove through mesquite trees and cactus and split wood fence post rails that were piled up in the shape of teepees. Fertile ground for a toddler's imagination.

Now, all that's left on that hill about 10 miles south of Snyder is part of the windmill, but the white house, barn, peach orchard, dirt storm cellar, and cow pen made from rusted box springs will now live forever in the pages of The Paragraph Ranch.

In the days and weeks ahead I'd love to hear from writers and readers about the places that you have known and loved that now only live in your memories.

Have a good weekend.

I have always written. In the fourth grade, I took a piece of notebook paper and created The Mudville News and drew pictures and wrote stories about the people in East Elementary. My classmates really liked it, but I couldn't keep it up.

If only I'd had an iPad back then.

Despite my passion for prose upon graduation from college I quickly succumbed to pressures that I abandon my assistant editor's job at a trade journal for something more practical. It was the eighties, everyone was getting an MBA and getting rich. I took a job in sales.

Granted it was ad sales at a newspaper, and it kept me sort of near the world of words, but that's like saying the Gaza Strip promotes multiculturalism.

I rose through the ranks of the business side of newspapers, from ad sales to circulation to promotion to marketing to online and finally, to audience development, working for Cox Communications, Gannett, Knight-Ridder, and the New York Times Regional Group.

But I dreamed of writing screenplays and books. In the spring of 2000 I threw myself into learning how book publishing worked. I went to workshops. I read how-to guides. I wrote and wrote and wrote. I received hundreds of rejections. I got an agent who promptly couldn't sell my book. I'd put the writing aside. For weeks. Months. Sometimes years.

In the summer of 2013 I threw myself into learning how the craft of writing worked. I read 22 current bestsellers in three months, and my writing improved.

My co-author of The Paragraph Ranch is a great writer and knows all the rules about style and craft. I write from passion and have learned a few axioms along the way. I have much more to master. But together we seemed to have a come up with a novel that people enjoy.

If we can do it, so can you.

In the days and weeks ahead visit us here at The Writing Life where we can share what we've learned and what you've learned about publishing and craft.