Somewhere In the Middle of Nowhere
It doesn't take long for a day to pass, a week, a month, a decade--and it's gone. In the Fuzzy Farmer video that my son just helped me post, my husband gives a demo of how an old corn picker works. I'm not sure of the vintage of the corn picker, but it is from an era long gone by when life didn't move at a ten or twenty row combine speed.
In my books I try to bring the past together with the present. I don't know how people think a book happens, but as a writer I can tell you a person doesn't just sit down and words flow onto the page. You don't send it off to an eager publisher, who in turn will send it through the presses and off to the book store and out to an adoring audience. That's only in my dreams, along with the six million dollars that (I wish) flows into my bank account. No, it happens step by (sometimes) painful step.
They say 'Write what you know'. It could also be turned around and said: Know what you write. Even with a contemporary genre there are things to research, to learn, and apply to make the books/stories real.
My son, sitting at the dining room table was talking, but as sometimes happens I didn't understand, or couldn't hear what he was saying. "What did you say?" I asked. "Didn't say anything, I was just talking," he said with a laugh. Lots of people talk, but not everyone has anything to say.
