When 10-year-old Lizbuthann arrives from Texas 1950's, Haiti leaves her less than impressed:

Weclom to Port-au-Prince
Some welcome. They couldn’t even spell it.
Gooey tarmac oozed around my brand new patent leather shoes, and damp heat wilted the Shirley Temple curls my mother forced my hair into earlier in the day. I could practically feel the ringlets springing back to their natural orange frizz. I began to glow. Southern girls don’t sweat, they glow. Rivers of glow ran through my scalp, and down my neck.

 

But Lizbuthann soon finds her exotic and mysterious new home is perfect for a kid with adventure in her soul, and snoopiness in her nature.

 

By Christmas of that first year, the household had expanded to include not only her mother, father, and little sister, but also her grandmother, Pee Wee, a small and talkative parrot, her horse, Wishes, Doux Doux Boudreaux (her new best friend), Angela, their colorful housekeeper, and last, but by no means least, a really pesky zombie. Here she describes Christmas in the jungle.

MY GIVEAWAY: COPY OF THE KINDLE VERSION OF LAND OF MOUNTAINS. Just leave a comment below to be entered and don’t forget to include your email address so I can contact you if you win. This giveaway starts now and ends 12/10/12 at midnight. I will notify the winners on 12/11/12 after noon. Good luck!

 

 

     For Christmas, we decorated a banana tree with tinsel made from aluminum foil, and shiny glass balls Mama brought with us. Pee Wee sampled the tinsel, but after suffering through a dose of castor oil my mother administered to clean out his craw, he left the shiny stuff alone.
     Frozen turkeys arrived from the States, Mama made her famous date nut rolls with cashews instead of pecans, Grandmother whipped up peanut brittle and divinity, and we exchanged gifts.
     Angela seemed pleased with the red lace slip I made her with my own two hands, even if it was somewhat lopsided. She said she could roll it up at the waist. At the Iron Market I’d found Daddy and Uncle Lloyd some nifty cigarette lighters decorated with pictures of pretty girls on the beach. My uncle soon discovered that when he turned his lighter upside down, the girl’s sundress dissolved and she was left wearing a bathing suit. Even though neither of them smoked, my dad and uncle liked the lighters just fine.
     For Mama, I bought a beautiful purple silk scarf like I’d seen Monique wear, except better because it had fringe with glittery glass beads. It came all the way from Paris, and my mother must have really loved it because she put it somewhere safe and never wore it.
     Also at the Iron Market, I spent a few more gourds than I’d planned when I found a perfect boy doll dressed in typical Haitian garb to go with Sister’s voodoo queen, and a lacy, bright red nightgown for my grandmother. Sister loved her doll, and Grandmother was speechless.
     Uncle Lloyd gave me a whole stack of brand new Brenda Starr comic books, and the rest of the family found me more Hardy Boys, Nancy Drews, and a huge watercolor set with special paper. Pee Wee tried to eat the paper pad, but soon settled on his own gift, a rare and shiny red apple.

I loved writing this book, as I spent several of my years as a child in Haiti, and it holds a special place in my heart.

Land of Mountains http://amzn.to/r9QYuR
Tween, teen, 8-108

 Grand Prize Giveaway!

As part of the Kid's Books Holiday Blog Hop we are also giving away a $30 Amazon Gift Card to one lucky winner. To enter, just leave a comment on this blog along with your email address and you will be in the running to win. You can enter on all of the blogs – that will give you multiple chances to win!

The Giveaway starts 12/7/12 and ends 12/10/12 at midnight. The winner will be notified on the afternoon of 12/11/12.
 Good luck!
 

Click here to visit the other blogs ~ you are bound to find a gift for someone on your list!

Mexico, a writer's paradise...or is it?

So, I live on a boat several months out of the year. Preferably at anchor. Lots of time to write, right? Wrong. 

Conception Bay, Baja California, Sur, is where we spent this winter. At anchor. With sketchy Internet, no electricity or running water on shore, and  25 miles from the nearest town, it is a wonderful place to hang out. Just the spot to write, write, write. Wrong.

Living on the hook requires a vast amount of time spent, well, living. Groceries come from miles away, electricity if self-generated with generators and solar power, water is made from sea water (11 gals an hour, we use about 5 gals a day),  basics are not so easy to come by.

There are a couple of small places to eat on shore, but social life is what the hearty beach dwellers, RVers, and boaters make it. Card games abound! Painters gather to paint. Dancers gather to dance. And writers? Far as I know, I was the only one within twenty five miles last year.

But what do I do all day that keeps me from turning out a novel a month? Here's a typical morning in the life of Jinx and Mad Dog (my first mate) at anchor.
4:00 am  Mad Dog gets up, has coffee, reads.
6:00 am  Mad Dog takes first nap of the day
7:00 am  Jinx wakes up, has coffee, gets on Ham nets. (My call sign is KC6YMJ) These amateur radio nets are crucial to cruising. This is where we get the weather for that day, and what is coming. This bit of info dictates the day's activities. If it's gonna blow over 25, we have to move to a safer anchorage. If under 12, we can safely leave the boat and go do "stuff" on shore.
8:30 We dinghy in to the beach, Jinx walks, Mad Dog plays cards with guys on the beach.
10:30 Late breakfast on beach or back on boat
11:00 Mad Dog takes second nap of the day. Jinx writes...or reads...or makes ice cream...

Days fly by, and suddenly winter is over and it is time to head back to Arizona. Surely in Arizona there is plenty of time to write? After all, electricity comes from a pole, water from a pipe; it's a friggin' miracle.

Now it is time to put on paper all the ideas I jotted down this winter, meanwhile doing all the promoting of my books that didn't get done without good Internet. So what am I doing? Blogging!

But next year on the boat I will, yes I will, turn out at least one book. Honest. Cross my heart. Really. I mean it.

By popular demand, a re-blog on DYI Kindle e-books; I did it, and so can you

DYI KINDLE e-books.

I did it!

Okay, that I should be a we, because my husband is the one with the patience, but between the two of us we converted all seven of my books into Kindle and put them on sale for .99 with only one exception, Troubled Sea at 2.99. We tried to do the ninety-nine cent bit with this book, as well, but Amazon deemed the file too large, which is a heads-up when writing my next book; keep the word count down. You can see all of my books on Amazon at
http://amzn.to/ro70QS

We also used Smashwords for all other digital formats, but that's a whole 'nother blog.

The tedious—but in the end, rewarding—exercise began with my decision to reclaim the rights to my books, and take over my writing destiny. This was not the easiest decision to make, as there are many authors out there who would kill for a publisher, but as a purely business decision, I think I did the right thing.

So now what? Pay someone to convert seven books? Not on my budget. We tackled the project ourselves and now I'm sharing with you what we learned. Was it easy? Nope. Was it worth it? Yep.

When I ended my publishing contracts, I asked for, and was granted, the rights to the cover art. This was a huge help, because the books were already for sale on Amazon, so we got to skip the new cover art process.

We are not techies, so I am going to lead you through these DYI steps in plain old English that even we understand. READ THE WHOLE BLOG FIRST, THEN BEGIN**.

1. Establish an account with Amazon Digital Text Platform. READ THE FINE PRINT! Yeah, I know, a pain in the you-know-what, but it will save you time, and even more pain.

2. Your manuscript MUST be in MS Word. If it is not, you gotta make it so.

3. Open your MS Word manuscript, SELECT ALL, and COPY.

4. Close MS Word.

5. Open Notepad in your computer's program list under Accessories. Then click EDIT and PASTE. (This will put your file in Notepad. Notepad will remove all previous formatting from your MS Word file.)

6. Click on EDIT and SELECT ALL in Notepad.

7. Click on EDIT and COPY.

8. Open a new file in MS Word.

9. Click on EDIT and PASTE. This will put the file from Notepad into a new (CLEAN) MS Word file to work with.

I know, this seems a little convoluted, and I am sure there are other, easier, methods, but this one worked for us, seven times, and was entirely FREE (my husband's favorite word.)

10. You now have a clean new file to work with. Go to your toolbar and click on the "start new paragraph sign" (if you can't find it, hit ctrl+shift+8) so you can see the paragraph marks and space dots (no double spaces between words allowed) in your manuscript. Click on EDIT, and SELECT ALL.

Format FONT to Times New Roman, 12 point. You can adjust font sizes as necessary for chapter titles, etc. later. We had NO luck with other fonts.

11. Click EDIT, SELECT ALL. (VERY IMPORTANT) and Format paragraph as follows:
Alignment Left
Outline level Body Text
Left and right 0
Special First line
By .5
Spacing before and after 0 point
Line spacing Single
Click OK

SAVE AS: Your book title

Now comes the fun part. You have to edit the manuscript. Change font sizes where necessary for chapter headings, and (this is important) insert page breaks at the end of each chapter. Make your manuscript look like it is supposed to, and for crying out loud DO NOT USE TABS.

**Whenever you see a warning in all caps and bold, rest assured this was a mistake we made.


If you do not have any photos in your document, SAVE AS Web Document (HTML). You will now have two* files to use for uploads; one in HTML FORMAT AND an MS WORD DOCUMENT. Hang in there with me, there is a reason for this.

It is now time to see how your book looks on a Kindle. To do this, guess what? you have to have access to a Kindle ebook reader. Use the email address that you set up for downloading Kindle books, and send an email:
(your username) @free.kindle.com
SUBJECT: convert.
Attach your WEB (HTML) document to this email (if no pictures)
Attach the MSWORD document (if there are pictures)
See, I told you there was a reason for two* types of documents!
Send the email.

Turn on your Kindle, make sure the WiFi connection is on, and within minutes, just like magic, your book will appear. If everything looks good, you are READY TO PUBLISH!
If not, go back to your word document, correct, save as Web Page, and re-upload to Amazon. I think I did this at least ten times for each book.

When you have it right, go to YOUR Amazon's Digital Text Platform account, follow the instructions, and upload your book.

If you have followed instructions, your book will be available for sale at Amazon Kindle store within a few days. If not, start over. Try it, let me know how it works for you. If you have questions, feel free to contact me at jinxschwartz@yahoo.com or kindlejunkie@yahoo.com.

All good things must end: Last day of Mystery We Write Christmas tour

I AM LOOKING FOR YOUR COMMENT! LAST CHANCE TO WIN A FREE e-book.

After two weeks of blogs by fifteen authors, we have reached the part where we give away the books we promised. This entails going back to all the blogs, seeing who commented, then drawing names from from a hat to keep it clean. I will be doing this on Sunday or Monday, so you have time to go the the following blogs, look up my blog, and make a comment!

Here is a list of the blogs:

Nov. 25 – Earl Staggs http://earlwstaggs.wordpress.com/ 
Nov. 26 – Anne K. Albert  http://anne-k-albert.blogspot.com/ 
Nov. 27 – Beth Anderson http://www.bethanderson-hotclue.com/blog/
Nov. 28 – Ron Benrey http://blog.benrey.com/
Nov. 29 – Pat Browning http://pbrowning.blogspot.com/
Nov. 30 – John M. Daniel http://johnmdaniel.blogspot.com/
Dec. 1 – Alice Duncan http://aliceduncanblog.blogspot.com/
Dec. 2 – Wendy Gager http://wsgager.blogspot.com/
Dec. 3 – M. M. Gornell http://mmgornell.wordpress.com/
Dec. 4 – Timothy Hallinan http://www.timothyhallinan.com/blog/
Dec. 5 – Jackie King http://www.jacqking.com/blog/

Dec. 6 – Jean Henry Mead http://mysteriouspeople.blogspot.com/  and http://theviewfrommymountaintop.blogspot.com/
Dec. 7 – Marilyn Meredith http://marilynmeredith.blogspot.com/
Dec. 8 – Mike Orenduff http://thepotthief.blogspot.com/

Earl Staggs, my fellow Texan and last, but by NO means least, guest on this MYSTERY WE WRITE blog tour

BOOK GIVEAWAY! Earl will be giving away a print copy of Memory of a Murder and a copy of the Short Stories fo Earl Staggs (e-book version) to lucky commenters randomly picked at the conclusion of this tour. Don't wait to leave your comments, because this tour is rounding up!

Derringer Award winning author Earl Staggs has seen many of his short stories published in magazines and anthologies. He served as Managing Editor of Futures Mystery Magazine and as President of the Short Mystery Fiction Society. His novel MEMORY OF A MURDER earned thirteen Five Star reviews online at Amazon and B&N. His column “Write Tight” appears in the online magazine Apollo’s Lyre. He is also a contributing blog member of Murderous Musings and Make Mine Mystery. He hosts workshops for the Muse Online Writers Conference and the Catholic Writers Conference Online and is a frequent speaker at conferences and writers groups.  Email: earlstaggs@sbcglobal.net  Website:  http://earlwstaggs.wordpress.com/

Today Earl shares with us: HERE’S WHAT HAPPENED

Once he’d figured it all out and knew whodunnit, Adrian Monk, everyone’s favorite OCD TV detective, would say, “Here’s what happened.”

Then he would tell how the crime occurred. As he described it, the audience viewing at home saw the event take place on the screen exactly as it happened in the past.

What better way to let an audience know what happened in the past than with both a narrative retelling AND a visual reenactment?  They can do that in movies and on TV.  Writers do not have that luxury, but we still have to tell our readers, “Here’s what happened.”  We call it backstory.

We have different ways of presenting backstory. We can have the narrator stop telling the current story and tell the backstory.  If it goes on for a long time, however, we run the risk of   boring readers and tempting them to skip over the “info dump” completely.  Imagine Monk telling what happened without the visual reenactment.  His show would never have lasted as long as it did.

One way to bring in backstory -- our version of a visual reenactment -- is to “show” what happened before, complete with dialogue and action exactly as it happened.  That requires, first of all, a clear transition to the past so readers aren’t confused about where they are in the story.  Once that’s done, the scene plays out just as it did before. Here’s an example, beginning with a transition:

Jane would never forget the day Dan left. She’d walked in the door and saw his bags packed in the foyer.  She’d hurried into the dining room to find him sitting at the table.

            “What’s going on, Dan?” she asked.

            “I can’t take it anymore.  I’m leaving.”

            Yada, yada, yada.

When the reenactment is finished, another clear transition is needed, of course, to bring readers back to the present without confusion. 

Another way to work in backstory, and a favorite of mine, is to bring it out in dialogue between two characters as part of the current story.  Like this:

            Jane knew Margie had something on her mind and waited for her to speak.

Margie took a sip of her wine and set her glass on the table, rotating it slowly with her hands. After several moments, she said, “Jane, you never did tell me why Dan left.”

            “I’m not sure myself. I came home and saw his bags packed and sitting in the foyer.”

            “Didn’t he say anything?”

Jane turned to the window and looked out. “I asked him what was going on.  He said he couldn’t take it anymore and he was leaving.”

            “Couldn’t take what anymore?”

            Yada, yada, yada.

Another method is a quick flashback.  Here’s how that might be done:

Dan had left two years ago.  She’d entered the house to see his bags packed and sitting in the foyer. When she asked him what was going on he said, “I can’t take it anymore. I’m leaving.” She still didn’t understand why.

A short flashback like that is not a major intrusion to the current story and chances are, you won’t lose the readers. It lacks the immediacy and drama of a reenactment, however.

In a story called, “That Night in Galveston,” I used a slightly different form of flashback. Amanda Barnes is kidnapped by a crippled, disfigured man with a gun and forced to drive to a vacant warehouse. She doesn’t remember the man and has no idea why he is doing this.  As she drives, little bits of information she’d wiped from her memory from twenty years before flash from her subconscious mind.  Here’s one of them:

Darkness. . .waves crashing against a pier. . .sounds of an amusement park in the distance. . .someone down on all fours. . .screaming. . .begging. . .

Shortly after that one, there’s this one:

Three men standing over him. . .yelling. . .kicking. . .swinging something. . .

And a little later, this one:

Gordie standing over her. . .pulling her to her feet…forcing a pipe into her hand…“Hit him, you little bitch, or I’ll hit you with it”. . .

Amanda is pulled into the past even further when something flashes from before she ran away from home and hitchhiked to Galveston.

A thick, burly man entering her bedroom. . . holding a finger to his lips to say, “Don’t wake your mother. We don’t want her to know our secret.”. . unable to breathe under his weight. . .biting her lip to keep from crying out from the pain he caused her inside. . .

This altered flashback method worked well in this particular story. It was a graphic, dramatic, and efficient way to bring out the backstory. I liked it so much I gave it a name:  “backflash.”

In many of our stories, we can’t get away from backstory. We have to tell our readers, “Here’s what happened.”  Part of our challenge is to do it in such a way that readers are not confused or bored and with minimal interruption to the current story.

By the way, if you’d like to know how Amanda escaped her fate, “That Night in Galveston” is one of the sixteen stories in my collection, SHORT STORIES OF EARL STAGGS.  You’ll find more information about it over on my website:  http://earlwstaggs.wordpress.com

While you’re there, you can visit with my special guest for the day. 

You can also read Chapter One of MEMORY OF A MURDER, my first mystery novel, which earned thirteen Five Star reviews.

And please don't forget to sign up for the drawing on December 9. The first name drawn from those who leave a comment will receive a print copy of MEMORY OF A MURDER.  The second name drawn will have a choice of an ebook or print copy of SHORT STORIES OF EARL STAGGS, a collection of sixteen of my best short stories.

 

Anne K. Albert, my MYSTERY WE WRITE guest for today. And she's the one who organized this blog tour!

Anne will be giving away e-book copes of Frank, Incense, and Muriel to some lucky commentors at the close of thie MYSTERY WE WRITE blog tour (December 9), so comment away and good luck! See below for details.*

Anne K. Albert’s award winning stories chill the spine, warm the heart and soothe the soul…all with a delightful touch of humor. A member of Romance Writers of America, Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, and married to her high school sweetheart for more than a quarter of a century, it's a given she'd write mystery and romantic suspense. When not writing she loves to travel, visit friends and family, and of course, read using ‘Threegio’ her cherished and much beloved Kindle 3G!


So, heeeers Anne!

Thanks for featuring me, Jinx, on Day 13 of the second 2011 Mystery We Write Blog Tour. What a fantastic virtual ride this has been! I hope you’re enjoying it as much as I am.

Speaking of rides, I understand you live part of each year on a boat moored in the Sea of Cortez. How exotic! Being more of a landlubber, myself, I spend a great deal of time writing in my van. Weather permitting, of course. I call it as my ‘cone of silence’. It’s an ideal place to just focus on writing. There are no disruptions, no internet connections, no telephone calls, and no friends or neighbors to distract me. It’s a sanctuary in every sense of the word.

Jinx – Describe your writing process.

Many authors plot their stories. They know the beginning, middle and end before they put a single word to paper.
Writing for me is more akin to being a fly on the wall.
I sit at the computer, or grab a pen and pad of paper, and focus on my characters. Like magic, I’m transported to their exact location and time. I’m there with them. I see, hear, feel, taste and smell everything they do. And like my characters, I have no idea what will happen next. Nothing is more exhilarating that watching the story unfold, and thinking, “Wow. I didn’t see that coming.” It’s a total rush!

Jinx – Tell us about your book.

FRANK, INCENSE AND MURIEL is set the week before Christmas when the stress of the holidays is enough to frazzle anyone’s nerves. Tensions increase when a friend begs Muriel to team up with a sexy private investigator to find a missing woman. Forced to deal with an embezzler, kidnapper, and femme fatale is bad enough, but add Muriel’s zany yet loveable family to the mix and their desire to win the coveted D-DAY (Death Defying Act of the Year) Award, and the situation can only get worse.
I’m proud of what readers are saying.
     One on Amazon said, “Anne K. Albert's…wit shines through this lightly suspenseful novel and her characters ring sweet and true. Can't wait to read more about Muriel, Frank and the rest of the gang.”
Author Marja McGraw said, “Laugh out loud funny in places, and that's my favorite kind of book. I was totally entertained by Frank, Incense and Muriel.”
     Night Owl Reviews gave it 5 stars and a Top Pick Award. “If you’re looking for a story with a little bit of humor, a whole lot of suspense and plenty of insanity, then you’ve found the perfect story.”
Frank, Incense and Muriel is also recipient of the prestigious 2011 Holt Medallion Award of Merit. J If you’d like to read a sample, click here: http://amzn.to/pg67sx

Thanks again, Jinx. I’ve enjoyed my virtual visit with you today. Happy writing, happy reading, and of course, happy boating!

Visit Anne online at her website http://fictionforyou.com/ and blogs http://marilynmeredith.blogspot.com/ and http://muriel-reeves-mysteries.blogspot.com/. She is also on Facebook www.facebook.com/annekalbert and Twitter www.twitter.com/AnneKAlbert.

*Remember to leave a comment and be automatically entered her comment-to-win contest.
CONTEST DETAILS: Comment to WIN! Three names will be selected at random from comments on all 14 of Anne’s Mystery We Write Blog Tour guest appearances. Winners will receive an e-copy of FRANK, INCENSE AND MURIEL, book one of the Muriel Reeves Mysteries. Visit http://tinyurl.com/3hzpqvv for her schedule and contest details. Good luck!

Didn't win? You can buy a copy http://www.amazon.com/Frank-Incense-and-Muriel-ebook/dp/B004CLYDRO/

Beth Anderson, my MYSTERY WE WRITE guest for today

BOOK GIVEAWAY! Beth will be giving away a copy of Night Sounds, Murder Online, and Raven Talks Back at the end of this tour (December 9) to a lucky commenter to HER blog at http://www.bethanderson-hotclue.com

Beth Anderson is a multi-published, award winning author in several genres including romance and  mainstream crime fiction. A full time author, she now lives in Washington state. She has appeared on Chicago's WGN Morning Show, The ABC Evening News, as well as numerous other radio and cable television shows. She has guest lectured at Purdue University, Moraine Valley College, and many libraries and writers' conferences. She loves music, particularly jazz.

Today Beth is sharing with us:  The Part They Never Tell You About When You Start Writing A Novel

    I’ve seen it in so many writers and I’ve done it myself. Write a little, stop. Write a little, stop. Put it down, put it away where you don’t have to look at it, under your bed or hidden in a computer file where even Bill Gates couldn’t find it. Anything to get it out of your sight and off your mind, because you don’t WANT to write today. Today stretches out into tomorrow, into the next day, and eventually you find you’ve wasted a week, a month, a year, and have not even one page to show for it, when what you originally SAID, and meant with all your heart, was, “I want to write a book.”

Sound familiar? I thought it might, but here’s what you need to realize: Someone a lot smarter than I said, “Writing is mostly re-writing.” And it is. Pages of great prose don’t just fall there by accident while you’re staring out the window thinking about something else. Oh sure, sometimes a brilliant thought or phrase or an unexpected scene does pop up and you don’t have a clue where it came from, but that’s one of those magic days when you’re blessed with some otherworldly sense and it flows from your fingers. It happens, although not often enough. You usually have to work at it.

Most days it’s just slogging away, hating what you just wrote, KNOWING you’re the world’s biggest fake because your dialogue is the suckiest ever, your narrative would bore any reader half to death, and nothing jells. That’s when you really have to buckle down and keep at it, because that’s the part you seldom hear about in author interview blogs. Published authors rarely want their readers to know what really goes on behind the scenes.

What happens is, if you’re smart and you want to be published any sooner than 2075, you keep noodling with it until it does jell. I would venture to say most of what most authors write is done like that. You sit there and force yourself to keep writing whether you like it or not. And then, when you save it and go back to it the next day, you’ll either find that it’s not nearly as bad as you thought and a few words will salvage it, or it is as bad as you thought. If it is, you go back and start noodling with whatever’s bothering you until you get it right. That’s how I do it, anyhow.

I don’t recommend my method for everyone. Many good authors say they keep on writing till it’s completely done and then they go back and fix everything. That works for them. It doesn’t work for me, and I’ll tell you why.

If I know something isn’t right with a scene I just wrote, I can NOT go on until it is right, and sometimes that means a day or so shifting words, paragraphs, deleting this, adding that, sometimes swearing the whole time, but I have to get it right. Then, and only then, I can move on. The good news about doing it that way is, when I write THE END, it’s as good as I can get it At That Point.

THEN I go back and fine-tune it, and that can mean any number of rewrites. That’s when I give into my motto: Write like a lover, edit like an ex-wife. THEN, when I think it’s perfect, I have others go through it for typos (yes, they do find them)and continuity or anything else they may spot that my feeble mind missed (and that happens). (Often).   

So when I hear that tiny voice that says something’s not right, experience has taught me that if I don’t listen, an agent or editor will nab me on THAT VERY SPOT sure as God made little green pears like the ones sitting on our kitchen counter. It always happens. Every time. I go back until I find where it went wrong and fix it. I’m probably OCD that way.

You may be completely different. Things like that might not bother you. They bother me. OCD again.

The point I’m making is, writing a novel isn’t just a matter of sitting down and typing out a book in a month or two and sending it off. It almost never works that way except for rare authors I known who are certified writing machines. Most of us have to re-write until boiling hot blood spurts out of our foreheads.

Writing a novel isn’t always fun. You don’t end every day thrilled with what you wrote. You may have to completely rewrite it tomorrow, and the day after that, and maybe the day after that. But you’re still making progress, and isn’t it better than writing nothing at all?

If you want to get published and stay published, you don’t have a choice. You have to do rewrites and you have to keep at. You may have to do even more rewrites when an agent or editor gets hold of it. Grabbing that elusive gold ring called success in this business is about keeping after it day after day no matter how bored you are or no matter how disheartening it is, because keeping at it at least gives you a chance at getting where you want to go.