12 Days of Writing, Tip 2: When the Blues are Good

Writers all have those days when they wonder if they're on the right track. It's easy to get the blues when the writing isn't going well, the naysayers are talking, and manuscripts are going nowhere.

Today's guest Peggy Ehrhart, author of SWEET MAN IS GONE (Five Star/Gale/Cengage, July 2008), has sang the blues. Like many writers, she knows about discouragement - and success. Her advice?

Tip 2 – Never Stop.

Sure, we've all been told never to give up in our quest to become published --I wrote five books before I sold my blues mystery, SWEET MAN IS GONE to Five Star, Ehrhart says.

"But there's another sense in which 'never stop' is good advice. I found that revising as I went along often meant that I spent weeks on one chapter, and it might be a chapter that I discarded in a later version of the project!

"Now I plough ahead, not striving for perfection but just getting my story told.

"I outline the whole thing in advance so I know where I'm going, then I write four pages a day and focus on piling up those pages.

"If I write every day, I don't even need to reread the pages from the day before because the material is still fresh in my mind. (If I pause to reread, I can't resist revising. Then I'm fussing over what I already did rather than moving ahead.)

"When the whole story is told, I go back and tinker to my heart's content-and that's fun too."

-- SWEET MAN IS GONE by Peggy Ehrhart - Blues-singer Maxx Maxwell is smart, talented, and gorgeous, with a band that's taking off. Then her guitarist plunges to his death and Maxx fears her career is over. When the death is ruled a suicide, Maxx vows to find the answer.