Florence Witkop's Blog, page 20
November 7, 2019
The most beautiful autumn ever
I’d been hoping for a beautiful autumn because it’s been a wet, wet, soggy summer. I’d always been told that such summers create beautiful autumns because the trees are healthy and have lots and lots of leaves. Those leaves, so the information goes, are also healthy and stick around as long as possible before dropping …
November 4, 2019
Reader question: How can I write a good novel?
There are steps to creating a novel: Decide which fiction category your novel will fall into. Mystery? Romance? Action/adventure? Whatever category you choose should be one you are familiar with. Design a main character and at least one secondary main character. Don’t spend too much time on this, a few sentences is plenty but make …
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November 2, 2019
Fantasy in romances
I love a touch of fantasy in the stories I read and in the ones I write but I’m not a fan of true fantasy stories that take the genre to lengths it’s never been before. I think I like that fantasy element because I believe there’s an element of fantasy in any romance, real …
October 31, 2019
What color are the flowers?
As summer and now autumn comes to a close, I can’t help thinking about flowers because they are so beautiful and because I always watch for them. I don’t grow them in either a garden or vases because it wouldn’t be nice to start anything and then watch them die. Because that’s what would happen …
October 28, 2019
Question: What’s the best way to write a fantasy novel?
Answer: The same way you write any novel, with an emphasis on the imagination! Every writer writes differently. All I can say is what works for me. I spend a lot of time thinking, working out the general plot in my mind. Theme, characters, location, and plot. I keep at it until I get it …
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October 25, 2019
People talk
People like to talk about other people, often in a generic way. One kind of person that seems to give endless conversational gambits to people is authors. People who write books. Novels. Sometimes I end up in a conversation with such people and they don’t know that I’m an author. I feel somewhat odd at …
October 23, 2019
Horseradish
Horseradish is symbolic of my inability to grow anything. I sell fudge and fudge-filled banana bread at local venues. Farmers’ markets and similar places. At such venues, I meet a lot of farmers and they are all wonderful people who are more than willing — even eager — to share their expertise with a klutz …
October 21, 2019
Question: When you are planning a novel of 50k to 100k words, how long is your first draft?
Answer: I don’t write long novels, so my answer can only speak to the length of the first draft of a 50k novel. My first draft is usually about the same length as my finished novel but I tend to rush through the first draft, so the first draft of a novel of 50k would …
October 19, 2019
Side Streets
Writing as a profession involves many things. Writers wear many hats. They find themselves going down streets they’d never have dreamed of exploring. That’s me. My latest pursuit involves making advertisements for my books because writers today must also be marketers, salespersons, and publicity agents. So I found a few free sites online that allow …
October 17, 2019
The Rhythm of The Seasons
I pass the shore of a nearby lake on the way home from town. Today, for some reason, the lake caught my attention and I was thrown back into the years when we lived on lakes. First was on a settled lake near town where I taught school and Dick was an engineer in the …
