You’ll never hear us say writing is easy around the My Book Therapy campus. No siree, Bob. Writing is hard. It’s work. Here’s what gets me. I have a great idea, I see it all—beginning, middle and end, then I sit down to write and my inspiration vanishes. The story feels too slow. Too muddy. Too awkward. The things I thought the protagonist wanted now don’t work. Or seem trite. I can’t find the layers. Everyone sounds like Gumby and Pokey. After sixteen books, the pit of despair in the middle of my stomach isn’t as deep, isn’t as fierce. But still, about 30K into a book with a deadline looming, I’m wondering how this book is going to pull together. In the end, they always do. Yay, God. I […]
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About Rachel Hauck
Author Archive | Rachel Hauck
Using Dialog and Prose to Create the Setting
Last night I sat in a small circle of writers disguising themselves as readers. As we discussed the book of the month, one of the reader-writers said, “The dialog and language really drew me in. It was part of the setting, really.” That hooked me right there. Not to read the book because, well, I wrote the book, but as a blog topic! Using Dialog and Prose to Create the Setting. I never thought of it before but word choice, dialog, the arrangement of words can really help put the reader in the mind set of the PLACE the story is being told. The era. The region. The social class. Education. Even values and belief systems. We’ve all heard word choice is key to the author’s voice. We’ve also learned […]
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Don’t Forget the Details
I’m hacking my way through a first draft. I get frustrated with the first round of writing. Everything sounds corny, the same-ole-same-ole, and I either under write or over write. The scenes usually skim the surface of what’s really going on. I write things like, “she walked through a crowd of her friends, greeting them, air kissing their cheeks.” It’s because I don’t really know what’s going on yet. I don’t know how much detail I need in the scene. Sometimes it’s perfectly valid and needed to skim past a detail of friend’s names. Sometimes we don’t need the color of every dress, the table cloths and velvet curtains. But yea, sometimes we do. Most of the time we do. Susie was reading to me from the Pioneer Woman’s book […]
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Thoughts On Writing A Review
I’m venturing out. Being bold. I’m going to talk about writing reviews. You may wonder what this has to do with writing or being a writer. Everything. Writing is art. That’s the first thing I want you to remember. Art. And art is subjective. I’ve read many books that I’d have written differently, but I choose to read the story as the author portrayed it. There are so many things going in an author’s heart and mind while writing it is IMPOSSIBLE to think of every angle, every pitfall, every emotional high or low. Many times an author will have an objective in mind and during the writing process¾changes, editing, rewriting and proofing¾and the original objective gets chipped away. What seemed clear in the author’s mind doesn’t quite communicate in […]
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