I’ve been stretched for time, having to choose what I want to do with the waking hours these past few months! This blog has been one of those things in my life’s pile of “gotta do’s” – along with the housework! Both are very important to me, just haven’t figured out how to expand the hours and minutes the good Lord has blessed me with to fit it all in.
Retirement from my “day job” is scheduled for the middle of October, and unexpectedly taking more brain cells than I expected. Suddenly the owners of the company are paying attention to my departure, and I am doing a lot of training! Glad to see the years I put in were valuable to them, but it’s kind of exhausting. While my hours at “work” have been greatly reduced, it is taking me most of the day before I go in and the day after I complete my duties there to recover. Who knew!
Continuing with my efforts of getting my writing skills up to speed, and in the process I have come to some profound decisions on the structure of the book.
I am still putting together a nuts and bolts “handbook” of shooting aimed (hahaha) at the mature woman, but I have decided to fictionalize most of discussion of the issues a mature woman faces – from the fears and physical issues involved in deciding to own a gun and learning to shoot, to some of the more basic components of finding classes, need for practice, etc. In other words I want to “SHOW” rather than “TELL” the narrative underlying issues, and develop a few characters to help with that. Also planning on a “twist” of having the WhiteHaired Shooter as character in the book, and present the training manual along with the story… Least that’s where I am heading. They will be separate, but integrated. What I don’t want to end up with is a “training manual” that might sell, but very few of my target audience want to read it all the way through. By presenting (hopefully) an engaging story, I want my characters to speak and help reach my readers. Entertain while educating.
I never did approach life in a straight line manner, zig and zag has always been my rather warped style! Don’t know why I expected anything different, especially since I released my inner child from her bondage!
So, back to sharpening the skills and the pencils! Story arcs, plot twists, character development, and writing lots of unrelated flash fiction and short stories for practice! And somehow keep a log of my journey in this blog. I’m thinking and hoping that the actual retirement mid-October will assist in that!
Back to hitting the books!
— Peggy
THE WHITE HAIRED SHOOTER
The White haired Shooter
whitehairedshooter 