Balancing

Photo by Bekir Dönmez on Unsplash

The big challenge of writing is balancing all the other things that go along with being self-employed. There’s the marketing, the financial side, the writing itself, networking. So many things to take up time.

And, time is valuable. Time is precious.

These posts take up some of that time, but I like writing them. They help me feel connected to you, the reader. I hope you find them fun and worthy of your time as you read them.

It’s especially hard to do thing as I enter my third week in an arm cast. It’s difficult to type at a keyboard when my wrist is immobilized, but this will end soon and I will be back to typing at full strength!

The cast is necessary. A necessary evil? Definitely. I am naturally clumsy and this trait has increased over the years. If not for the cast, I would have slammed my wrist into doors, walls, and the backs of chairs too many times to count.

If you have any good ways to manage your time, I would love to hear it! Post here or send me an email at sonjadanielson@gmail.com.

Looking forward to hearing from you! Sonja

Becoming–

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

I am asked frequently how I became a writer. I’m asked also how I come up with my story ideas.

My response is: how do you not have stories constantly running through your head?

I’ve been making up stories for as long as I can remember. A wonderful lady used to tell how I would be going to sleep when we were all camping and they would hear my voice acting out some scene or other. That’s when I was maybe three or four years old.

Everything I see is filed away and it’s fun to take things out and examine them to see if they will fit into my current WIP (work in progress). Sometimes I’ll write a scene and a memory will pop up that I can integrate into the description.

The fun of writing the Guinness the Therapy Dog series is that I have the famous dog right here at my feet. If I want to see how he plays with a ball, I can throw it for him. It’s fun to have my subject ready to watch!

I hope you are living your own story! Sonja

Writing

When I write my stories, I tend to plot them out in three acts. Just like a screenplay or a stage theatrical. One of my go-to books is Screenplay, the Foundations of Screenwriting by Syd Field.

It sang to me and really morphed with my writing style. It also helped me with my plotting. Sometimes I tend to go off on tangents. I tried writing without a ‘storyboard’, my own version of the standard type you typically see from screenwriters. It was terrible and I wasted a lot of time on stuff that needed to be deleted.

I know many writers who are “pantsers”, who can write without knowing where they are going, but that’s not me. And that’s okay. Everyone has their own way. That’s the fun of writing: it continues to evolve. What works in one story won’t work in another. Just as the story can surprise you, so can your methods.

Enjoy the journey!

Have a great week, Sonja