Exercising My Learning

This entry will be short because I've got work to do. I've already switched over my chapter one to third person by basically changing all the I's to she's or April (my heroine's name) along with other appropriate pronouns, but it's not done yet. Now I need to go back and deepen the POV.

I've been on an exercise walking plan for the past month or so, heading out to tromp the neighborhood most mornings. I've been passing the time by listening to audio books. The first one was John Grisham's The Innocent Man, a true crime story that shows how an incompetant police investigation can totally mess up a man's life when he's wrongly accused of murder. It's both upsetting and fascinating at the same time. It also causes me to worry about how many people may be sitting in jail right now for this very reason. By the time the man in Grisham's book was exonerated, he was mentally deficient and very sick. He died an early death.

I'm now listening to an ABA book called After This by Alice McDermott. ABA meaning published in the secular market, not the Christian. The author literally paints words and phrases into her story like a master. So much so I ended up purchasing a hard copy so I could read her prose and highlight it. Her POV's are so deep they make my heart sing with the desire to write like she does. I love authors who do this so well. Another one that comes to mind is Mary DeMuth, a fellow ACFW member.

So my exercising is serving two purposes--giving my body much needed strengthening and giving my mind something to camp on to enhance my own writing when it comes to deepening those POV's. For you writers who honor me by reading this blog, if you're not looking for writing in the genre you write in yourself, do it! I've learned so much about the craft by the example set by these masters.

Hopefully someday someone will say they learned from me the same way.