Ideas

"The best time for planning a book is while you're doing the dishes."
— Agatha Christie

Like Agatha, I get a lot of ideas when I'm 'doing the dishes'. Of course, with wet, soapy hands, it's a little hard to write them down!

When do you get your best ideas?

Dialogue

If you write fiction of any type, you have to write dialogue. I was surprised to learn that a lot of authors find this the most difficult part of writing.

It has always been my favorite part of writing a novel. When I am writing, there are constant conversations going on inside of my head and I seem to have trouble inserting the descriptions in between them! I'm not saying that my conversations always 'work'. I do many, many re-writes.

In surfing the Internet for writing advice, I came across the concept of recording your dialogue and then playing it back to yourself. Have any of you ever done this? Did you find it effective?

Contest Deadline. . .Just Ahead

The deadline for the Tony Hillerman short story contest is coming up quick! Here is a link with the guidelines, if you still want to enter:

http://www.wordharvest.com/index.php/contests/shortstory

Me? I'm still working on my entry, and hope to have it polished up in time.