Craftie Ladies of Suspense

I'll bet that everyone here enjoys reading, but I'm curious--have any of you thought about writing?

Have some of you started writing a manuscript? Finished one? During the Faith, Hope and Love One-Day Conference in San Francisco, I gave a workshop on "Career Building, Before and After the First Sale." I addressed some steps that a writer can take to reach her (or his) goal of being published...or to reach the second and third sales, and beyond. During the next few weeks, I'd like to talk about some of these steps. Even if you aren't thinking about writing anything yourself, it might be interesting to glimpse some of the effort it takes for a writer to finally see her name on the cover of a book!

First of all, I think all writers start out as strong readers---people who have had a love of books long before they ever thought of sitting down at a computer or yellow legal pad with a pen in hand. A deep love of books is what draws most of us to try our hand at something that, at first, may seem like an impossible dream. I remember the first time I met an author for the first time--the lovely Kim Cates--and I was in awe. She was so sweet, so genuinely nice. That moment was a turning point for me, because until then I'd had some sort of nebulous image of authors residing at some unattainable altitude in the stratosphere. It suddenly seemed as if it might be possible to write, too!

There can be a lot of reasons to write. Perhaps it’s the social networking with a group of local writers, your friends. The fun of coming to conferences. The joy of creating a perfect sentence. You'd like to leave your family a memoire. Perhaps you don't care if you are never published. That's perfectly okay. But if you do want to be published, or have made a sale or two and want to continue on, then I have some ideas that might help you along that journey. I hope you'll stop in on Sundays during the coming weeks!

Roxanne Rustand