Okay, I am disconnected from my blog and I don’t like the feeling. Me and my blog, we used to be tight. Now I am chasing myself in circles and not doing some of the things I really do love to do.
So since I have copied from her before (as in letters to characters) I am going to copy from her again. The "her" in this case being
.
Ask me a question. Any question. Or tell me what you’d like me to post about if you have specific topics or kinds of questions you’d like answered.
Maybe this will help me get things started again.
Always great to see you!
Hmmm, a question? Okay, here goes:
What do you miss most about your blog when you’re away–the writing or the reactions from your readers? And does that influence in any way how you respond to/interact with other bloggers?
Re: Always great to see you!
Oh boy, a tough question right out of the box, eh? 🙂
What do you miss most about your blog when you’re away–the writing or the reactions from your readers?
So the easy answer is both….I miss the writing and the reactions because a writer writes to be read, right? (Boy, that’s an odd sentence.)
But to pick one I would have to say that I miss the writing because writing defines me more than anything else. If I’m not blogging I am probably not doing much of any other kind of writing either which means I am disconnected from myself. Not a fun place to be.
And does that influence in any way how you respond to/interact with other bloggers?
I’m thinking that you mean does my answer above influence how I interact with other bloggers. I’m not sure. When I don’t blog I feel guilty. When I don’t blog I am also not commenting on other blog posts though I rarely miss a day of reading. But sometimes the emotional energy to respond to someone is more than I have in reserve.
Then comes the guilt. Because if I blog and want people to react to me how can I expect them to comment if I don’t do the same for them? About then I feel my world capsize on me and I usually have to just let it go and start blogging again, which will start me commenting again.
So yes, I guess it does. Thanks for the thought-provoking question.
Hi Susan, nice to *see* you! Here’s a question…
What are your top 5 favorite picture books (by authors you don’t know)?
~Della
Oh boy, Della, that is another hard one. I don’t buy/read many picture books anymore unless they are written by friends so this will be going back some.LOL
Harriet You Drive Me Wild by Mem Fox
Mack Mad Movies by Don Brown
Lotus Seed by Sherry Garland
Julius the Baby of the World by Kevin Henkes
Bear Snores On by Karma Wilson
Thanks for the question!
do you have an all time favourite work of fiction?
That’s a hard question for anyone who reads as much as I do. I don’t think I have a book that I could say was my absolute favorite, not from childhood or adulthood, though there are some books that I reread again and again because of the emotional response they cause in me but an all time favorite, no.
How do you pick up a story you’re working on, after life has forced you away from it for a few days? Or however long?
Eeek…I’m still trying to figure that one out myself. I usually start at the beginning because I’m a tweaker. So when I start on page one there’s obviously something that I want to change, even if it just a word or two. And I move forward through however much I have written a couple of times, going back to the beginning each time. For me it helps me sink back into the story but I do fear that sometimes I rework the beginning too many times.
If I don’t have a lot of pages written yet I talk to my characters with my character letters, trying to figure out what they’ve been doing while I’ve been gone.
Hello, Susan. Thanks for joining us here today on ASK AN AUTHOR. Inquiring minds want to know if you talk to your characters while you garden? And also, how in the heck do you keep so many balls, er, I mean, characters, in the air at one time?
Thanks for the question, Liz.
Inquiring minds might be surprised to know that while I am in the garden my characters are the ones making all the noise. Somehow it is the quiet of the garden that allows my mind to open enough to hear all the conversations.
I do talk to my characters just before bed. Usually it is about the current project. I tell them what I see is going on and ask them about what they think is going on. I always ask my main character a question just before I shut my eyes so that he can ponder it in my dreams.
I don’t juggle characters nearly as well as I have you convinced that I do. 🙂 The character letters actually help me with that. I’ve always worked on multiple projects at once. Not putting the stories down at the same time but one is in the getting-to-know-you phase and another is in research mode and another is the actually writing. But my subconscious is working on everything at once.
How did you come to decide (realize?) Hugging the Rock wanted to be a novel in verse, and do you think you’ll write any more verse novels?
Oh boy….the realization that Hugging the Rock would be in verse came after many, many attempts to write it in prose and not being able to find the voice. The poet Janet Wong suggested that I play with poems by the characters to see if I could find the voice that way and as soon as I tried that, well the voice and the rest of the book fell into place.
Yes, I plan on writing more verse novels and actually have a couple of them in various stages. Interestingly enough I told one of my editors that I was on the fence about whether to put the energy into finishing the next verse novel or one in prose and she suggested prose. She said there might be a small amount of people who would tend to piegon-hole me as just a verse novelist if the next book was also in verse. That made good sense to me, hence all my attention to Flyboy of late.
Thanks for the question and for letting me copy from you. 🙂