First Post…

So — I’ve never really done a blog before. I started one a long time ago, but it petered out quickly, and I can’t even find it now. So I’ve had to think long and hard what I want to write about, and — surprise! — I decided that I want to talk about myself, as an author and a reader.

Reading is my great passion in life. I am constantly reading, and now that I have my Kindle, I am never without a library at my fingertips. I spend a lot of my money on books (more than I should — let’s just say that my rebate in the great e-book settlement was well over $500), and I have so many books in the queue that I will never, never run out of things to read.

I was a reader before I was a writer — and I began to write early on. I always knew that I was going to be a writer, so I always approached books in a dual role: reader and learner. I knew I wanted to write stories that had people who fell and made mistakes and learned how to pick themselves up. As an INFP, I knew that emotion was more important to me than plot or structure, but I knew that I had to learn to put the story skeleton together before I could add the feelings. So I read and read, and I learned from some of the very best.

I have decided that I will write in this blog about how I write — the decisions I make with characters, the struggles I’ve had with structure, the ups and downs of this story that has taken so many years to write. But I also want to talk about the writers who have influenced me, so my next post is going to be about a great writer who died just a month ago. I will include some analyses that I did a long time ago on my favorite novel in her body of works. I don’t know if anyone is interested, but it will be fun for me to revisit the books that made such a difference to me as a writer.

Till later…

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