Publishing a book is exciting stuff, but being a writer is not necessarily glamorous. Discouragement, writer's block, and heavy-duty rewriting are problems I have tackled recently, but things are looking up.

When people ask me when the next book is coming out, I hate admitting that I never worked on it all last school year. I justified my lack of writing by claiming lack of time--instead spending my limited "writing time" on the phone selling The Orange Slipknot. The problem may have been writer's block. Or it may have been plain old laziness and procrastination. I don't want to become a slave to either TOS or the sequel; I don't want them to run my life. Even when school was out, I didn't find time to write; my summer vacation seemed gone almost before it started, between a trip to Australia to do a horsemanship clinic, time to be grandma, riding horses, yard work, and the usual summer projects. But the good news is, I am finally back in the writing mode, and my goal is to finish the sequel this school year.

I started writing the sequel shortly after finishing TOS, about 12 years or so ago. When you finish a manuscript and begin the submission process, it's time to start working on a new project, which I did. I had an idea for a sequel sketched out in a brief synopsis, and managed to write about half the story. Then I got stuck, and, not having even sold the first book yet, I didn't have enough motivation to work through the problem. I put it aside and decided that if I ever sold the first book, THEN I'd return to working on the sequel. What ended up happening was, after about 20 rejection notices on TOS, I practically gave up on writing in general. In the next few years, I got busier job-wise so writing was on the back burner, so to speak. When I finally sold TOS, it was a real challenge to find time in my life for the editing process, and later, for marketing.

I did a little work on the sequel about two years ago, but had trouble getting back into writing on a regular basis. This year I've had a change of schedule; my job as Remediation Tutor has ended. It was grant-funded, and with the state budget shortage, the grant was no longer available. I am back to substitute teaching, which gives me a day off here and there. My plan is to use those non-work days as writing days, and so far, it's working out great. I prefer to write when I have big chunks of time alone, something I just didn't have the past few years.

Before I could write any new material, I needed to reread what I had already written, and work through the part I got stuck on. I studied my synopsis to make sure I remembered where I was going with the plot, then started back at the beginning. It's amazing how much your ideas can change in 12 years--about writing, and about horses, which are at the heart of this story. My husband and I work with horses and our ideas have changed a lot over the years as we continue to improve our horsemanship. I ended up changing much of the horse content to reflect my current ideas. I also realized that one of my subplots was not going to work, so I cut out everything related to that.

Another thing that has changed quite a bit is my understanding of my target audience: middle-grade readers. The last four years I have worked with this age group, and especially with struggling readers. I have a better grasp now of the vocabulary, sentence structure, and pacing that is suitable for my audience. I realized I had written some of the story at an almost adult level, so I rewrote much of it, ruthlessly cutting out many of my precious words--something very hard for writers to do! My ability to critique myself, cut and rewrite has improved after going through the editing process during the publication of TOS.

This process got my writing juices flowing again, resulting in some new ideas that added depth to the story and more suspense to the plot. Somehow, the problem section was no longer a problem now, and new ideas for the last half of the story got me excited about plunging into my work. I believe I have close to two-thirds of the story written now, and it seems possible that I may actually finish it this school year.

I know that many writers discipline themselves to write regularly every day, but I choose to fit my writing time into my schedule as my time varies. For me, writing doesn't come first; it comes after family and job--balanced with other responsibilities, commitments and life's frequent unexpected events. That may sound like heresy to some writers, but I am not a full-time writer. I am just barely a part-time writer! I can't follow someone else's formula--I have to find what works for me.

Why a blog?

This blog will be the story of how my middle-grade novel, "The Orange Slipknot," is published, and what I as an author am working on.

I am home for the summer, since I work in a school. My main summer writing project is to finish the Curriculum Unit for the book. But the last few days, I have been spending several hours a day creating my author website and letting people know about it. I have already created two other websites (Jack Young Clinics and Jan's Bible Notes), so this part was not new to me. But I have had to spend alot of time learning my way around my new web hosting service, LunarPages. I even had to call Customer Support a couple of times.

It was VERY exciting when I finally clicked on my website and saw it appear on the Internet, for everyone to see! Every few hours I think of some little thing to add or change, so I fiddle with it and tweak it often. This past year, I have visited many children's author websites to get ideas about what I want on my site.

I can't wait to add more pages, but I must also spend time working on the lit unit. I have been working on a possible sequel to "The Orange Slipknot" this past year, and hope I can fit that back in later this summer. Some authors write all day, every day--I don't. I have a job and many other activities--piano students, housework, yardwork, special summer projects, grandchildren, and horses. I am just as busy now as I was during the school year!

I hope you enjoy reading about the progression of events as a children's book is published, and how one author goes about her writing.