For this year, 2018, I hope for better family relations. Why are relatives so stubborn? They never behave the way you wish they would (tongue in cheek). And I hope that my ailing mother makes it past her 90th birthday in May.
Well, these aren't resolutions, only wishes. I resolve to be kinder, calmer, to think before I react.
To not want to throw books or keyboards across the room when miffed.
Stop writing in the Passive Voice, though often I don't know what that entails.
Convince people that I have no 'narrators' in my stories, those are my characters' thoughts. I was taught not to add 'she thought' in a critique group. When you're in someone's POV every detail is in your character's thoughts.
And the bigee of 'show' don't 'tell.' I love to show, but often get it wrong. I will work on that one.
Eliminate 'could', 'would,' and no 'should', when possible. Delete those 'there was' and 'it was.' Pretty soon, few words are left to form a sentence.
But every writer has their own voice, and I notice the majority of best-selling authors don't follow any of this advice. These writers even have the audacity to write in incomplete sentences!
I dislike that everyone wants stories to be fast-paced, no nuance, no in-depth characterization. Just action, action. I guess I was born in the wrong era. While writers of yore can be too flowery, or have inner thoughts that run for pages, the classics are classic for a reason.
Most of all I resolve to keep writing and learning and becoming a better person all around (how is that for too many 'gerunds'?)
My just released novel is On a Stormy Primeval Shore:
In 1784, Amelia
sails to New Brunswick, a land overrun by Loyalists escaping the American
Revolution, to marry a soldier whom she rejects. Acadian Gilbert fights to
preserve his heritage and property—will they find love when events seek to
destroy them?
Diane Scott Lewis grew up in California, traveled the world with the navy, edited for magazines and an on-line publisher. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband.
