It’s the week before Christmas and all through the house I see distractions galore. Writers are the best and finding productive sounding distractions from actual writing. Research can encompass just about anything I find myself doing that is not writing. In fact, this blog was supposed to be written long ago but I had a book to read all day yesterday as research for my podcast. And this morning, I had Christmas shopping to do online that led to research of middle grade gift trends for my work in progress. And then during lunch I got caught up with checking twitter for new posts and follows, but really started researching writing tips. In this last case, I’m happy to say that the distraction prompted the writing of this post.
I came across a quote that was shared by a writer I follow. “a problem that a character can walk away from, is a book a reader can walk away from.” After tracing the tweet I was able to attribute the quote to Jay Whistler, a writer teacher and editor. It sounds like it could be a quote that has been around a while because I had a déjà vu moment when I read it. Someone must have told me that same thing at a workshop. It is also an ah ha kind of quote. Something we all know but rarely have it condensed so clearly. So I thank Jay Whistler (or whoever she might have been quoting – I drew the line at my research time so I could write this post). I will be thinking this over and analyzing my works in progress to make sure they can’t be put down. I’ll make sure the stakes are high enough, then maybe push it even more. And I’ll try to skip the research and just write it down!
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