JudithWansleyeclecticPalette.com

DEAR ABBY ADMITTED SHE WAS AT A LOSS TO ANSWER THE FOLLOWING:

Dear Abby, A couple of women moved in across the hall from me. One is a middle-aged gym teacher and the other is a social worker in her mid twenties. These two women go everywhere together and I’ve never seen a man go into or leave their apartment. Do you think they could be Lebanese?

Dear Abby, What can I do about all the Sex, Nudity, Fowl Language and Violence on My VCR?

Dear Abby, I have a man I can’t trust. He cheats so much, I’m not even sure the baby I’m carrying is his.

Dear Abby, I am a twenty-three year old liberated woman who has been on the pill for two years. It’s getting expensive and I think my boyfriend should share half the cost, but I don’t know him well enough to discuss money with him.

Dear Abby, I’ve suspected that my husband has been fooling around, and when confronted with the evidence, he denied everything and said it would never happen again.

Dear Abby, Our son writes that he is taking Judo. Why would a boy who was raised in a good Christian home turn against his own?

Dear Abby, I joined the Navy to see the world. I’ve seen it. Now how do I get out?

Dear Abby, My forty year old son has been paying a psychiatrist $50.00 an hour every week for two and a half years. He must be crazy.

Dear Abby, I was married to Bill for three months and I didn’t know he drank until one night he came home sober.

Dear Abby, My mother is mean and short tempered I think she is going through mental pause.

Dear Abby, You told some woman whose husband had lost all interest in sex to send him to a doctor. Well, my husband lost all interest in sex and he is a doctor. Now what do I do?

Remember these people can vote!!

Starting your vegetable garden can be tricky. You want to get your seeds or your baby plants in the ground so they will have as much time possible to mature. But, (the but is always the killer) if you put them out too soon you run the risk of waking up one morning after a late frost to a patch of wilted, ice encrusted tragedy. All of your plants have fallen down and they can’t get up and you can’t help them up. You will also notice the weeds that have congregated at the perimiter of your plot of land are shaking off the ice shards and leaning greedily into the barren land that you once called your garden.

You need to wait a few weeks more. The groundhog is not reliable. When you are sure all danger of frost is over, start again. If you’re a new gardener you might want to start with those plants that produce with abandon like squash.You will have squash coming out of your ears with little or no effort!

I don’t care if you don’t like squash! You have friends don’t you? And you have even more people that you don’t know. Take a bag to work and to Church and put up a sign that says free squash! Trust me, people will take them. You know why?… because they are free! The first people to take them will be the ones that don’t even like squash! Why? Yes, because they’re free! Post a recipe for zucchini bread with them and they will disappear even faster.

Part 1 – The Plan

Where should I start? The beginning is always a good place. I was born the daughter of a share cropper……..screchhhhh. We don’t want to go that far back. LOL! Just a little humor to get your attention.

As those who write know, it always starts with putting pen to paper, or pulling up the computer and putting fingers to keys. It really was just that simple for me. I needed a stress break from work. The job had dealt some harsh blows, and I needed an escape, so I did what I always did, grabbed a romance novel. (Might as well escape with a good looking man that loved me beyond belief.) At the time it was a Brenda Jackson’s novel. My son was watching television in another room and I could hear President Bush (the son) in the background. The thought occurred to me that we need a President that cared about the people, the country, the world, anything but himself. “Can’t you find something better to watch on TV?” I asked my son, who has been heavy into politics since he was eighteen. “There’s nothing else on,” he replied. Understanding, I nodded in agreement. “The only thing on TV now is reality shows. Whatever happened to dramas?” Then he said something that changed our lives. “You have a weird imagination. Why don’t you write something and send it to the networks.” I stood there in the middle of the floor just staring at him with the romance novel in my hand and thought, why not. From the mouth of babes.

     I went back to my office, put my feet up and tried to continue reading my book. But my thoughts drifted back to my son’s suggestion. I put the book down, moved over to my computer and begin writing a story about a politician that cared about people, family driven and fine as Denzel Washington. At first I wrote about 50 pages and stopped. When I read it, I thought it was pretty good. So I called a friend over and asked her to read it. She came over, sat in my office and began reading. I went in the kitchen to start my Sunday dinner. An hour or two later she emerged from the office, (I almost forgot she was in there) took a seat on my sofa in my living room and began asking a series of questions about the characters. To my surprise and hers, I was able to give her all sorts of details about each character in the very short story. It was funny because from there, we talked for hours about what I had written. Her parting words were, you need to finish that book. “Book? What book? I was supposed to be writing a script for TV.”  

From September to December 2005, those 50 pages turned out to be the outline for 800 pages of what you now know as The Heart Series.  I put the information my friend extracted from me down on paper which gave me the family and friend structure. Then I put together a flow chart showing how and where each story connected to the next. Here’s the original layout; 

As you can see, when I began my adventure in writing, it was never about just one book or just one series. From the very beginning the plan was set for The Heart Series, plus a few more. 

Why am I sharing this information you ask? That’s simple too. When I started on this journey, I knew nothing about writing, publishing, marketing or public relations. Even worst, I had no idea where to gather the information. Therefore I tapped into the only resource I knew, the internet. I began researching my favorite authors, how they got started, what motivated them and how they learned. Since Brenda Jackson, Beverly Jenkins, Francis Ray and others shared their experiences to help me with my journey, it is only right for me to do the same for others. You know the helping hand theory.

This is the thought I want to leave you with. If you are truly interested in doing something, not just writing, but anything, make a plan. Take the time to research the area, don’t think because you have a little talent, a contract or offers are going to fall into your lap. Learn all you can, from whomever you can about the craft. Remember even bad information can be helpful. We learn the best lessons sometimes from failure.

Until the next time,

Iris