Well here it is Abe Lincoln’s birthday, a significant day indeed.  I grew up in Vandalia, Illinois, the Land of Lincoln.  Our small town of 5,000 was the first state capitol of Illinois, so in grade school we studied former President Lincoln like he was part of the family.  My great-grandmother, Lydia Mae, lived in our house when I was a child, and her claim to fame was that her grandfather, a member of the Illinois legislature, got an invitation to Lincoln’s funeral in Springfield.  She let me take the invitation to school for show and tell.  The other significant fact today is that it is grandson, Blake’s first birthday.  

TESSA AND CLAUDINE UPDATE: I am revising Chapter 9 at the moment.  Tessa, a high school junior, just received a letter from a boy she’s dating, a college freshman.  My story’s fiction, but I use some  autobiographical tidbits –as is the case with Tessa’s letter from Bill, her college beau.  He writes Tessa and also his parents, but he puts the letters into the wrong envelopes.  Tessa gets the letter intended for his parents, and they get the letter he’s written to her.  Writing this scene took me back to that day when I read the letter my old boyfriend wrote his parents.  It was pretty darn funny.  Little did I know it would one day end up in a novel. 

ECHOES UPDATE:  Our poetry book is doing well.   The Eden Prairie, MN, newspaper had a great article about ECHOES and Rachel Nelson, my granddaughter and 12 year old co-author.  They had a photo of Rachel, who lives in Eden Prairie, information about the poetry book, biography information about both of us, and a couple of our poems. 

Stay warm.  Snow is expected in Savannah tonight, not much, but it’s a big deal here in the South where it hasn’t snowed for many years.  I guess it’s time make one of my soup recipes. 

By the way, I now have a google and yahoo connection to my RSS feed in case you’d like to subscribe to my blog.  Come back for a visit.

Did you ever send the wrong letter to someone?

Lisbeth

My goal this year is to revise my novel, TESSA and CLAUDINE get it on the market.  I finally have a working plan.  As a Virgo, this makes me feel soooo much better. 

Here’s the deal:  I reread a chapter on the computer.  What I’m doing is changing the tense from past to present and also tightening.  As I read, I ask myself — does this scene move the story forward.  If the answer is no, I delete it.   Since I’ve decided to put the whole book in present tense, instead of past, I pay close attention to the verbs and make tense changes.  And then I record the whole chapter on a tape recorder.

I got this idea after reading a newspaper article in which authors were interviewed about writing techiniques.  If I hesitate while reading my words, it tells me that the sentence doesn’t flow well.  I stop and make changes.  I find that while reading, I often automatically change the sentence to something that sounds more natural.  I catch spelling errors working this way and also find words that still the tense change.   Overall, this system of revision has me pretty excited.  Try it.  You might like it.

Have you got any writing tips for me?  Any new writing books you love?  I saw a book advertised by James Alexander Thom, on Writing Historical Fiction that sounded good.  No, he’s not a relative. We just happen to share the same last name.

If you are looking for some good recipes, check out Samantha Matthews website:  www.diggfood.com   She wrote me a note this week, and I loved her recipes. 

Stay warm. The winter weather is upon us.  Lisbeth