Being a writer has a lot of perks. One of them is everyone around thinks of you as rather a wizard. There’s something magical about writing to those who don’t. And here you are, making up all this stuff that goes on for chapters and chapters. Then wham! You have a novel, complete sentences and all. Impressive stuff.

There is a drawback, however. Whatever we write, we try to do it to the best of our ability. That works fine for a novel, short story, eulogy, or speech about water rights. When it comes to how many quarts of milk we need or should we have spaghetti or fish for dinner, it’s another matter. Just how eloquent should you be on a grocery list? But we try. How we try. We can’t let our readers down, even if they are only the cats, who in my case, think I’m overrated, anyway.

Speaking of quarts of milk, that reminds me of the writer, Scott Turow. I remember him giving an interview years ago and telling a wonderful story. His wife asked him to write a note to the milkman about cancelling a future delivery. Remember when we had those? People who delivered one thing to your home at no extra monthly cost to you? Now, of course, there is Safeway, Nob Hill, and Walmart delivering the whole kit and kaboodle for a fee. From bathing suits to prescriptions to food.  One Stop Shopping without having to stop and shop. Sometimes the milk is warm, the eggs are cracked, and they’ve thrown in baby wipes which I didn’t order, but nobody’s perfect.

But I digress. Back to Scott Turow, his wife, and the milkman. After an hour, his wife appeared at Turow’s desk and seized the scratched-out paper he labored upon. She sat down and scribbled, hold the milk on Thursday. Thanks. Then she got up and taped it to the front door.

As Mr. Turow was speaking to a room full of writers, his story not only got a big guffaw, but a round of applause. Nobody knows better than we do how the search for the perfect word becomes all encompassing. And how long it takes to find that word matters not. We are writers and that’s our job.

I tell people repeatedly when I give a lecture or speak to a book club, that what we do isn’t smoke and mirrors. It’s like tennis. The more you practice, the better you get. Yes, you have to have a certain amount of talent, but what it really takes is hard work, tenacity, and joy.

Joy is a definite perk. No matter what’s going on in the world out there or in my world at home, when I sit down to write, I am taken to a place I want to be.

Hmmm. In a way, that is magical.

Which is a shame because my to-be-read pile is growing every day, filled with intriguing titles, but I’m working on book seven in my PIP Inc. Mysteries series which means no reading until it’s finished. You might wonder why I can’t read when I write. I’m a very undisciplined writer so it’s not like I sit at my computer tapping away all day long. Why, then, can’t I read when I take a break from writing?

I consider my particular writing and reading impairment as the result of being a good realtor for almost twenty-five years. Realtors are taught to mimic clients talking speed, body language especially use of hands, emotions, and language as much as possible. Classes are taught in how to do those things. I dropped out after the first class because I’m a natural mime, always have been. That helped me as a real estate agent and probably has helped in other situations, too, but as a writer it’s a problem for me.

Many cozy mysteries are written in first person. I don’t do that. I write in third person. But if I’m reading a good cozy written in first person, I start to slip into that style of writing which makes a mess of the POV and my manuscript in progress.

There are other distractions, too. Dialogue is a potential problem. After fifty pages of another writer’s dialogue, my characters begin to mimic their phraseology and start to take on their use of language. Mime time again.

My storyline suffers when I read while writing. I do a short psychological profile and background history for most of my characters before they head for their places on my pages. I do use a timeline because I need to know who knew what when or I get lost having, for example, a clue about when a character who had taken her hearing aids out in a noisy restaurant, put them back in (critically important in What Lucy Heard, for example) and why her dinner companion didn’t know she had.

My outlines are a lot more flexible, though. Before starting a book, I know who the killer is, how and why the murder victim was killed, how the story will begin and how it will end, and have characters I want to introduce to move the story forward, but there’s a great deal of flexibility in how all those pieces come together. If I read while writing, the mimic in me invariably spots a clever plot twist in the work I’m reading and wants to incorporate it in what I’m writing, which as you can imagine, makes a mess of my plot. I do wonder if it’s just me or if other writers have the same problems?

Until my book is finished and off to the editor, I’m sorry Nicole, Vinnie, Mary, Robin, Valerie, Claire, Genevive, Richard, and Verlin. Your books will have to wait a bit longer to be read, but I do know how important reviews are so I promise to leave one as soon as I finish reading your book.  It’s the least I can do for keeping you waiting while I write.