Ann Minnett, Author

Authors of the Flathead's annual writing conference took place this past weekend with great success! We try to keep attendance at 100 but attracted 110 writers this time. Next week I'll share the particular life-changing strategy I learned. But the absolute best part of this and any writing conference is spending time with other writers. No matter where we fit in the writing/publishing continuum, writers share the love of putting words on the page. Once again, I found that I'm not unique in another important and humbling way: Many of us fear the self-reveal that accompanies publishing our work. I talked about the fear with a few writers who are stuck. Like me, they have written reports, facts, technical pieces for decades, but the prospect of sharing themselves in fiction blocks their progress. Just when I think that I don't have anything to offer other fiction writers, I find that I do. The self-reveal hasn't killed me, and it won't kill them.

It’s raining today and 40 degrees. Perfect weather for hunkering under a throw on the couch to read, that is, after I edit my manuscript. I’m editing book #2 for consistency while rain plunks on our metal roof, and three deer meander in the yard. Heaven. You’d be surprised at the ease with which basic details change over the months of writing. As the book took shape, the stepson’s coloring and speech changed as his character matured in my head. I gave up trying to recall the name of a law firm, or what street my main character lives on and what year she ran over that guy. Wow, are mismatches apparent in the reading! I have two other objectives for this read-through: Delete unneeded scenes or redundancy, and add transitional paragraphs for clarity. Actually, there’s one more objective. Whatever happens, I must not sink into the morass of wordsmithing, which for me is the most fun and hardest to avoid in early drafts. More later.

  Here we have a most glorious stack of pages. The second novel! Well, the second draft of the second novel. Up until today I didn't care to 'waste' paper on a print-out. I've massaged the scene order and general content enough to get down to serious editing. ☑ Printed copy. ☑  Pe ns in rainbow colors ☑ St icky tabs ☑ Patience.

I used to take my children to a community swimming pool in the summer. They were young, and we stayed in the shallow end together. One afternoon, four 12-13 year old girls huddled in the water nearby. Three were teasing one--today, we’d call it bullying. Their voices became louder as the teasing turned menacing. Then I heard this:   Trio: “Your mother doesn't even care what you do.”   Girl: “Yes, she does! She loves me.” I wondered what led up to that moment and what happened next. Flash forward eight years: My own daughter turned 13, going on 35. My sweet girl rebelled, rolled her eyes, stomped out of rooms, and was generally embarrassed by me. I often thought about that day in the pool during the difficult moments. Although my daughter fought me, did she really equate my restrictions with my love for her? The vignette with the girls in the pool suggested that she might have. Fascinating... Yes? A universal story hides in what I observed at the po...

1.        Start one month before the promo to line up advertising opportunities. 2.        Read advertising guidelines for each site. Pay for some. 3.        Avoid July and August promotions. Readers are busy vacationing, preparing to vacation, entertaining bored children, or getting ready for the school year. They have less time for reading or thinking about reading. This is my theory. 4.        Don’t be discouraged by low numbers of downloads, and don’t be overly encouraged by high numbers. 5.        Don’t be discouraged by negative book reviews. I reserve the right to be heartened by the glowing ones. 6.        Marketing is a crazy business and has little, if anything, to do with the creative expression in writing.   BTW--Thanks if you downloaded my book! Thanks all the more if y...

Just a note to say that mid-way through Day 2 of free downloads, Burden of Breath is #5 in free downloads on Kindle and #1 in the Psychological category. This is so fun!

A show of hands for all the people-watchers. Me, too. Don’t ask me the score of the football game, but quiz me on the fans in our section. Clothing, who’s bored, who’s having a fight with their partner, which couples don’t fit together, parenting styles, first dates, and on and on. The writer in me makes up stories about what led them to this moment and what will happen when they go home.   Lucky for me, this avocation became my profession.    It wasn't until I taught Head Start in the early 1970's in a tiny East Texas town that I knew what I would do with the rest of my life. What a privilege to teach/observe 36 impoverished 4- and 5-year-olds in their first school experience. (The fact that I had majored in French and German and was nonetheless hired for this job is another story.) The force of the children’s personalities stunned me. The show-off. The leader. The caregiver. The outcast at 5! The friend to all. The 4-year-old worrier. Their friendships and earn...

I wrote a riveting scene in which a man beats his dog.   The action and some of the dialogue was exactly what I witnessed a few years ago. It sickened me then and disturbs me even now. I hoped that slipping the scene into my story would 1) make my male character meaner and 2) serve as catharsis for me. Success! I felt relieved for writing the scene, and the character was scary… Too much so. Every reviewer in my critique group was horrified. They warned me that the graphic violence went overboard and would turn off my readers. They said that a narrowly averted beating would be powerful, suggest the character’s violent nature, and keep readers reading. They’re so wise. I still love the scene because it has personal significance, but I’ll make heavy revisions. I write to communicate with readers, not sensationalize. Not even when it really happened.    A bike rider (at left) carries his dog on his back through Kalispell traffic. No dog abuser,...

My sister, Gi nny Merett , is one of my biggest fans, and I am hers. She’s a multimedia artist, but I especially love her stylized watercolors . She recently completed a collage series, “Coats.” Check out her work. Lucky me, no matter where I look in my home, there’s some object that Ginny created—often silly, some refined, and some gifts that could only be mine. This is the Storyteller Doll that she made for me when I got serious about writing. The Storyteller is holding two babies, recounting her tale. I keep it on my desk as a reminder that I am a storyteller and how lovely it is to have a sister, talented or otherwise.

This is my husband, Mike. He laughs a lot and was especially tickled when this picture was taken last week. He’s more apt to laugh out loud than to smirk, sigh, cry, yawn, or gasp. So yesterday when we were watching TV, knitting (me), and reading (who watches TV only?), I didn’t think too much about Mike laughing out loud. But then he gasped. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, saying, “Do I even know you?” He was reading the first chapter of my new novel and speaking to me. “What do you mean?” I said. He ruffled the pages. “Sometimes I think that you spend all your time in a place I don't know with people I don’t even know.” “Why, yes I do.” All of the delightfully crazy characters who reveal themselves to me on paper. I can’t tell you how it pleases me to surprise him, although I almost never set out to do so.