Alison Kent

I’m about to start my first adventure into plotting backwards . . .

Interestingly enough, plotting backwards worked well enough for me to see that I need some pre-plotting first! LOL! Yes, writing is NOT for wimps!

I canNOT believe it but I’m going to have to make a spreadsheet. I’m writing the 4th book in the gIRL-gEAR series and I don’t remember details about the less used secondary characters who are primary characters now. ::sigh:: I guess all that Excel work I do at the office does come in handy . . .

I was thinking today about the way I write. I recently read a post on an author loop where a woman talked about pounding away on her keyboard for 10 - 15 hours a day. ACK! I don’t think I’ve sat at my desk for 15 hours straight once in my entire life. I do good to manage 15 minutes.

I really bad-mouthed the idea of an Alphasmart originally, but have found it an excellent way to capture words in the short periods of time in which I work.

It only shows 4 lines of text at a time, but rarely do I find my mind thinking ahead of that. Or, once I get to that place, I’m ready for 4 more. Strange how we all work so differently.

I think what I really wanted to share here is that anyone with even a limited amount of discipline can finish a book. Even if it’s only done 15 minutes at a time!

Blog is short for “web log” - at its most simplistic, an online journal. Articles on the phenomenon abound. Here I post what’s on my mind and, at the end of the blather, you comment - or not! Click on the “link” link to say your piece, and then click on the “comments” link to see what others have said. (Think of this as a trendy message board!) Also, anything appearing in pink font is a link. Have fun!

I have no idea why this happens, but every time I get the go-ahead from my editor on a story idea, I want to design a new website. Not even necessarily for myself - though, in this case, that happens to be the truth. I had been wanting to make changes for quite awhile, and the blank page is so much easier to fill with graphics than with words.

Wonder why that is? I think it’s my right brain seeking out another creative outlet for the overflow.

So, today, miserable with allergies, instead of doing the 3.5 pages I needed to do, I spent the day’s lunch hour and other free time, ahem, putting together this site design. No content today, I’m afraid, though the content will all be there before we go LIVE! I just thought I’d chat it up in the meantime!

A couple of fun things happened today. I got from my career partner a critique of Melanie and Berg’s first chapter and she loved it. Whew! Secondly, I received a letter from Harlequin telling me my first Temptation, CALL ME, is going to be reissued in a reprint continuity called Greatest Texas Love Stories Of All Time. Tres cool!

Later . . .

I am extremely frustrated and jazzed at the same time. This site is really coming together and I’m having so much fun playing with it. But when I play and my play doesn’t work it’s so aggravating. Argh! Doesn’t help that I’m all self-taught (sorta like writing!) and don’t know a durn thing about javascript, etc. (I do a good job faking HTML!) I copy and paste and replace the variables as instructed but, nada. My birdies aren’t showing up!

I really need to get back to accounting . . . Oh, not to mention the 3.5 pages I need to get done today. And it might help if I did yesterday’s 3.5 pages, too! Ha! But I need to make my rollover buttons smaller because my pages is scrolling too long for anyone without a 19″ screen to see! It needs to be a law, I say, that nothing smaller than a 19″ screen is offered for sale!