The Blog Tour

My Thanks to Tibby Plants for inviting me on the Blog Tour.  Happy to be aboard.

I’ve been writing creatively for about 8 ears, but during my prior career I wrote often on technical topics.  Today my favorite subjects are whatever comes to mind.  For me, that is usually memoir and humor with occasional stories that often have a tinge of fantasy. My work has been published in hardcopy anthologies, magazines and online journals.  I self publish an anthology of my work each year, usually consisting of about 25 stories with a few essays mixed in.

What am I working on?    I continue to produce short stories and memoirs of about 1 to 2,000 words.  If the content of an article warrants, I call the piece an essay.  But frankly I'd rather write fiction or fictionalized “slices of life.”  In addition to short-shorts, I write an occasional 5,000 word short story and have turned a few of them into novellas, publishing these as individual hard-copy volumes and on Kindle.  

How does my work differ from others of its genre?    I should know, since I publish the work of other authors right here on the More Stories Place.  But I really would find it hard to differentiate.   Besides, I'm not sure I care.  We should write about what's inside us in the most honest way possible, practicing the best principles of our craft.  Who cares if it sounds like anyone else?

Why do I write what I do?   I'm retired.  I self-publish and I write what I want.  I don't expect Stephen King's agent to call me and I don't believe I’ll ever make any serious money from  writing. I have no need to be famous and therefore I am completely free to write what pleases me.  Maybe that's why I find writing relaxing and usually not a chore.  I’m simply a narcissist with a pen.

How does your writing process work.    I wait for the urge to write to descend upon me. I can feel it.  Ideas begin to drop into my mind and I begin to look forward to practicing the craft of writing.  Putting it down on paper, revising, making it sing.  (This blog entry will probably not sing; I’m writing it in a bit of a hurry.)  I start writing and I quit when I’m stuck or run out of enthusiasm.  I give the piece a working title, store what I have written on my computer and enter it into a log of “Starts.”  I have around 200 starts all stored in PC files and backed up.  Each Start may be a plot idea, some dialog or even a mostly complete story lacking a key ingredient.  When the urge to write strikes me with no accompanying story idea, I open up my Starts file and pull a few out on the screen and work on them.  The process often yields a story or at least some progress. 

I find I can make the characters sing more fully rounded notes when I let them take over the plot.  What results may be a story completely different from what I originally intended. And so, much of what I write is stream-of-consciousness.  As you might imagine,  I spend a great deal of time going back and making the pieces fit together into a sensible story.  Sometimes it works.

My master story list is here:
http://www.windsweptpress.com/essays.htm

My Writing Blog is here:
http://windsweptjournal.blogspot.com

And the Front Door to my website is here:
http://www.windsweptpress.com 
 

Information on next blogs on the tour will be available by the end of this week.