a new year!

 It's the first session of the IWSG in 2025!

Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds!

Let’s rock the neurotic writing world!

Our Twitter handle is @TheIWSG and hashtag is #IWSG.

The awesome co-hosts for the January 8 posting of the IWSG are Rebecca Douglass, Beth Camp, Liza @ Middle Passages, and Natalie @ Literary Rambles!

January 8 question - Describe someone you admired when you were a child. Did your opinion of that person change when you grew up?

Yes, I admired Jo March from Little Women. Before you all write to tell me she wasn't a real person, I know that and I knew it then, but why be a writer if not to have your fictional characters influence others? I liked Jo because she didn't care for the trappings of being a girl and neither did I; she loved telling stories and so do I; and she kept on until she attained her goal and so did I. My opinion of her has not changed since I've grown up. Or perhaps I haven't grown up yet.

I will say there was a trap that I know Louisa May Alcott did not intend when writing the book - and that was the trap of the romance of writing and having a book published. It has been two and a half years since my first book was published and I decided this holiday that the second book in my series (which is finished) is going to be self-published. The publishing world isn't the same as it was in Alcott's time, or indeed in my twenties, thirties, forties or even fifties. I would love to meet my publisher at the round table at the Algonquin Hotel in NYC for a nice long martini and a few cigarettes while we discuss next steps but that is not to be. Instead, this week, I've secured an editor (one who worked on The Crooked Knife), a book designer, and a plan to get Butter and Snow published by the summer. I did most of the publicizing of CK and it was during the last months of the pandemic so think I did a pretty good job. Part of that was not as ambitious as I will be this time as I politely waited for the publisher to step in. They didn't. Now I will have a plan that will suit me and I won't need to run any of it by anyone else. I am worried about distribution but I have a friend who publishes a select number of books mostly on history and architecture, who has promised to help me with that and securing a good print deal. And I have so much help online - especially with all the articles my friend, Elizabeth Spann Craig of Mystery Writing is Murder has penned. I'm excited to do this and while I'm under no delusion about the work involved, I'm also less enthralled with the traditional publishing path. Why not give a try to both? After all, I'm in my seventies - the perfect age to take risks.

And to quote Jo March:  If I were a girl in a book, this would all be so easy.