The reader’s response is not something a writer might necessarily focus on when he or she is writing. More likely is the focus on character, plot, action and putting it all across.
Still, that reader’s response is something we all need to keep tucked away at the back of our minds when writing. Something that seems perfectly okay to the writer might really throw a curve for the reader.
Peggy Bechko nails it. Again:
As a writer I’m fascinated by the way the brain works, aren’t you?
…Yep, we wanted Peggy Bechko back so badly that we couldn’t wait for her next contribution and swiped this baby right off Peggy’s wonderful blog:
Hey, you, are you working too much?
Yep, you. Yes, I know, you’re working a job and you just have to write so you have to juggle both and that means working…a lot.
Writing is a tough business and we’re always trying to put our best foot forward, to give our best, to produce our best work, but there is such a thing as trying too hard.
You know it. I know it.
There are few things less impressive than someone trying to be impressive.
Yes, there are many of those in a writer’s life and they come in a wide variety of very good, very bad and lots of in-betweens. When I look back on the twisting path that brought me to where I am, it never ceases to amaze me. True, there are lots of quiet times tucked in throughout the ‘biggies’ but it’s the bigges we remember most clearly.
My first big moment came when I was about 20. I’d been writing since I was 14, full length novels. And I’d begun submitting to publishers. Back in the typewriter and carbon copy days. Before computers, before copy machines could even made decent copies (scary, huh?). I’d connected with an agency that had taken me on (that was a pretty big moment), things got rolling – then I found out the agency had gone belly-up. Really bad news because in that moment I realized a number of things; agent search would have to be initiated again, time was lost, and worst of all I’d have to retype the entire novel to have it ready for presentation (remember the carbon copy and no computers?)…. Ahhhhhhh!
Next big moment – I got a phone call a few days after the above first big moment. This was a much better big moment. A agent from the defunct agency was calling. He was starting his own agency, liked my work, had an offer from Doubleday and was I interested? Welllll……saved by the weird finger of fate! First novel sold, published when I was 22, a western by genre, Night Of The Flaming Guns. Followed by secondary smaller big moment – told by editor (did I mention that book was written by a 22 year old female in the first person as a 45 year old male?) “women don’t write westerns”; would I be willing to use my initials on the cover – P. A. Bechko? Okey dokey, but only ‘cause ‘women don’t write westerns’. You have to remember this was a few years back…ahem, quite a few as a matter of fact – but sadly probably not as many as you might think.