I’m not talking about hiring a ghost writer.  I’m talking about reading your manuscript and wondering where in the world did that (paragraph, page, chapter…whatever) come from? 

     You’ve rolled along on your writing for days, and then you hit a bump that made you stop.  You decide to go back and read over what you’ve written.  Strange sentences jump out at you.  It seems that someone else took over your keyboard and did the typing for you.  Your characters are clumsy, their dialogue is stilted, the scenery has lost its luster, and everything that you thought was brilliant looks dull.

     Do you stop and fix it?  Sometimes if it’s bad enough, you might.  Otherwise, it might be better to mark the spots where things took a downhill plunge to fix up later, and push on. 

     What do I do?  I hit the ‘text highlight color’ and highlight everything that is weak.  This way I can go back later and easily spot the areas I need to fix.  When do I fix them?  I fix them on those days where I am having trouble moving forward in the book.  I find that if I go back and do my corrections I can often find the insight in my characters or their motivations that I need to continue.

     When the weather is warm, I can’t resist the impulse to be outside in the yard.  I take my Alphasmart and settle into my favorite chair under the magnolia tree.  I will merrily type away for hours and wave at a passing neighbor or two.  Sounds good doesn’t it. 

     It works well, unless I’m in the process of writing dialogue when someone walks by.  Then they see me talking to myself.  At which point they are almost certainly thinking that I’m a crazy lady.  What I’m doing is acting out the parts and yes, it looks and sounds crazy.  However, it works for me.  The last thing I want is for my characters to sound stilted and unnatural.

     Dear Hubby prefers that I write dialogue outside in the nice weather.  I do tend to drive him up a wall all winter long with my characters’ recitations.  I tell him it’s just as bad for me when he talks to the TV while I’m writing so we’re even on that score.

    After adding the categories widget today,  I spent a few hours setting up categories in hopes of making it easier for everyone to navigate  my blog.

     I admit it.   I was procrastinating.    I knew I had to write a few bad guy chapters for my book, Doggoned Dead and I was feeling a bit overwhelmed.  I hadn’t had time to sit down and and write for a couple of weeks and was at a loss as to where to begin. 

     I decided the best thing to do was to drag out the print out I’d done a few weeks ago and reread it.  This is the same one I’d taken to Borders and had marked it up with highlighters. 

     Eureka!   By doing that I began to remember where I was when all hell broke loose here.  I  managed to pound out two pages of one chapter and do many of the corrections I’d marked in the manuscript. 

     (It also helped that  Dear Hubby was off visiting his mother and the pups were snoozing together on the couch.)

     I came up with an idea of another thing to do to my bad guy.  Thanks to mystery writing peer, Dave I even had the right vehicle to use.   The book is moving forward again.