A Novel Creation www.WatersWords.com

Meet Gloria Doty! Gloria Doty is a published Christian writer, author, speaker and blogger. She has 5 children, 13 grandchildren and 7 great-grandchildren. She currently lives in Fort Wayne, Indiana with her adult autistic daughter, 1 dog and 2 cats. Gloria and I met a few years ago at a writing conference. As you will see, Gloria has a great sense of humor and a zest for life! Me: Gloria, I am so excited to interview you for my blog this week. Welcome. Gloria: I know it will be fun today. February 24 is my birthday so it is great timing! Me: Yay! Happy Birthday! Gloria: Thank you. Me: Well, I know you’ve seen how I do this. I have a few questions I think my readers would ask if they were here with us. Many of them are relatively new to the writing/publishing game. So let’s get started. I want to start with your latest book and then talk a bit about the journey to get there. I read Bring a Cowboy Home and loved it. A romance for baby boomers? Yes! Tell us a...

As I go through this series of comparing the working of a jigsaw puzzle to writing a novel I am working a puzzle on my dining room table. It’s a slow go…but then so is writing. I first put together the straight edges. I sorted several pieces by color and then started finding the pieces that stood out in the picture on the box –the pieces that when put together created the focus of the picture on the front of the puzzle box. The puzzle I chose to use is a picture of a garden. There is an old chair on the stone patio, an earthen pot in one corner. Flowers spill over the garden wall. It is the promise of springtime. The picture is a composite of elements. The chair alone wouldn’t tell the story, nor would the flowers or setting. It is, in essence, a compilation of scenes. Before I wrote my first novel, Breathing on Her Own , a more experienced writer told me to identify eight to ten specific scenes significant to my story and write each down on a separate piece of paper. Her...

  If you read last week’s post you know that I am looking at working a jigsaw puzzle as a metaphor for writing a novel. Last week’s post was about keeping our eye on the “box.”   [Click HERE if you missed that one.] Today I want to talk a bit about a strategy experienced puzzlers use early on: finding the straight edges. For the jigsaw puzzle, the straight edges offer definition. They create a framework wherein the picture will be completed. I think that’s where novelists begin as well. As many puzzles have four sides and four corners, this week’s blog addresses four angles to explore when framing the novel. First, I think each writer needs to consider his or her own situation. How much time can you give to your writing? What do you want as your end product? Do you see this as your magnum opus or first attempt? When I was drafting my doctoral dissertation, I received excellent advice from my mentor. He said, “There was a time when a dissertation was a lifelong...

My youngest grandson likes to work puzzles. And he’s good at it. Not those “baby” puzzles where a piece will only fit one way. He’s beyond those tray puzzles with ten pieces, too. Augie is into puzzles well beyond his five years. He likes jigsaw puzzles. Like any good puzzler, Augie has learned a few tricks. He uses the box as a guide and hunts for the straight edges first. Have you ever picked up a jigsaw puzzle in a store, looked at the picture and thought, “That would be great for a winter day.” I have. Of course the puzzles I chose usually took longer than a day to complete. Our family would find ourselves eating off of TV trays.   The initial burst of puzzle energy would soon give way to some other distraction for our girls. Tom and I would not give up. We would work late into the night and stay with the project until it was finished. The girls typically jumped back in as they could see the end in sight and there was always competition for who got to put in the last piece...