Hello ,

A new interesting fact I learned about the east coast: sometimes we get residual storms from hurricane's. And that warning makes the schools and business FREAK out.

Yesterday I received a message from the school to pick my kids up early from school so everyone could be safe from the storm. I set off int eh car and arrived 15 minutes after my phone buzzed with the information. Only to be confronted with a line already formed by 35 people in the pouring rain. And of course I had forgotten my umbrella...

After an hour I finally received my kids, the sun came out and we headed home. Just in time for writing sprints with the Creative Writing Community.

To be fair to the school, the sky darkened by 3pm and the storm ended up cutting our power at 6:23. So it really did come.

Trying to find a funny poem about rain or standing in line outside of school brought me nothing, but this poem about not having any rain was pretty funny.

Unlikely Hero

My neighborhood has not seen rain

Since I fell through our windowpane.

And though people don't go out

Due to the unseemly drought,

I am hero of the floodplain.

Copyright © Richard Breese

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What do you prefer? Tomes or quick page turners?

Over the summer I grabbed the biggest books I've been wanting to read but always felt like I didn't have time for.

I love the feeling of having finished a book, don't you? You get to add it to your list on Goodreads and feel accomplished in finishing something...as long as you don't check out how everyone else you follow over there finished 10 books for your 1...

I started with A Time In Between. A 615 page book set during and after the Spanish Civil war. The thing weighs 1.08 pounds and is the size of a brick! But the story was very well written (obviously. It was a best-seller) in the European style.

You see, PLOT is driving a lot fo American novels these days. Plot, movement, action, conflict. These are all things that writers are told to focus on because it's what readers want.

And if you look at the 1-star reviews of A Time In Between, you would agree with that teaching. The people who really didn't like the book were looking for an American modern novel with action point plots.

But A Time In Between in focused on the character. And it's also written in a more 3rd person narrator POV, which most modern American novels are not. We have a craze right now of writing in first person such as the Hunger Games and many romance novels, or the limited 3rd person POV in which we see the storyline from the POV of the main character(s).

I very much enjoy this way of reading a story. It reminds me of the classics. Although there are a lot of super long paragraphs and tons of backstory. But cutting most of it and making it more action-packed would completely change, and ruin, the book.

My question for you is, do you like long stories with lots of background and based mostly on character rather than plot? Or do you prefer plot and action? I don't think there is a good or bad answer. I like both. A long book not well written with no plot AT ALL is a bore and not worth reading. But a great plot with boring characters is also not worth reading, right?

I simply find it an interesting thing to talk about. For instance, the book I'm working on now could either be really long with in-depth looks at each character, or I could make it a series and have shorter books, though the plots for each would have to be hashed out enough to make them all three interesting. Right?

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If you are at all interested in writing, whether fiction or creative non-fiction, I'm launching a FREE Writing Sprint Mini Course on September 6th! In the course you'll be sent five videos, one each day for five days, with a prompt that you can use for fiction or non-fiction. Then on Friday the 10th I will invite everyone who signs up for a free live writing sprint!

It should be lots of fun. Sprints are a great way to start writing again or get your toes wet. The prompts help you overcome writer's block and the limited time helps psychologically with waiting to do it until you have a 'day to write'. In just 30 minutes you'll have some writing done!

Free Writing Sprint Course

You can sign up for it here----^^^^^^

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Until next time,

Kat

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