Reading For Writing

I finished the first draft of White Rock last week, and, strangely, the REASON I finished wasn't a need to finish.  Instead it was just the fact that I had a new idea and I figured it would be best to finish my last unfinished project prior to starting something new.

So, as for my new idea, I have stumbled across Hallie Ephron's Writing and Selling Your Mystery Novel (fair warning - that's an Amazon affiliate link) and it seems to offer some of what I have wanted/longed for/whatever - a process to follow when writing a novel.

Now I am firmly of the believe that pantsers want to be plotters, and plotters want to be pantsers, and ultimately, you have to find what fits and work along that framework.  But, what I have found (and blogged about before) is that I have discovered holes in my writing that a little more planning might have prevented, and I have been questing after a process for getting there (and for doing some revision) so that I can seek something repetitive.  Not sure this book has all the answers, but it has sported some fruit so far (despite the typos and poor formatting for Kindle in parts of the book - perhaps I should notify the author).

While I've been at it, I've been reading other stuff - some in my genre, some not (yes, those are affiliate links, too). You should read, too. Goodreads stats for the year indicate I've read/finished 10 books so far this year.  My goal was 12, so I'm well beyond the halfway point.  What I've been working on lately is trying to notice patterns in the authors whose work I admire.  Those patterns make for successful genre books.  Hmmm. That sounds oddly similar to something I would like to write.

Off to work through some brainstorming.

Cheers!