Beth Warstadt

The warnings were true.  Blogging is an addiction.  On June 8th, the day after my last post,   I realized I was blogging about writing instead of writing, so I have spent the last few days trying to overcome the block with my WIP that I had mentioned before: how to introduce a spirit guide into a story that was rambling off-topic.  A long walk by the churning Atlantic–storms were coming in–helped me clear my head and solve the problem.

Now I am coming to terms with a different, extremely persistent issue.  Early on a reader commented that there was no doubt I was a technically well-trained writer, but my sentences tended to be too long and complicated.  How do I rein in a Master’s degree vocabulary to make something that is engaging to read?  I think I did a pretty good job in my first book, Soul Lost, and hopefully in my second, The People of the Green Hills, but I find I am falling back into old habits as I bury myself in the third novel and second in the series (working title: the Bend of the River).  I am pressing on because I know if I don’t I will never finish it, but I would like to avoid all of the rewrites the others have required.

Writing is hard work!