Structure

Ghostwriting was valuable work for me.  Not only did it pay the bills, but it also taught me a lot about how I write and how I think.  One story in particular just captured my heart.  I couldn't stop thinking about the characters, who felt like family to me.  So I constructed a meticulous, 68-point outline for their book.  I thought I had the structure and order down.

And because every piece integrated so well with every other piece, I thought I could just write whatever interested me that day.  On days when I was happy and the sun was shining and my kids weren't yelling at each other, I wrote the love story.  On days when I wanted to cry anyway, I wrote the hard parts.  I thought that it was working just fine.  But it wasn't.

I had forgotten that, as time passes, people change.  I'm not the same person with the same reactions and thoughts and views on life at thirty-eight as I was at sixteen or twenty-seven.  The time that passes changes me.  The same thing happens with characters.  As you live through events with them, they change, and your perspective of them changes.  So though the structure worked for me, it didn't work as well as it would have if I'd written it in order.

I applied that lesson to later books.  I'll tell you about another one next time.

The one you can read right now is Dawn Hyperdrive and the Galactic Handbag of Death.  Try the first chapter for free at my website, and then buy it for Kindle or Kindle apps at Amazon or for all other e-readers at Smashwords!