How to be an Author: ON WITH THE SHOW, THIS IS IT

When I was a child growing up in Milwaukee, one of my favorite television programs was The Bugs Bunny Show. Bugs loved to stand on his rear legs and chew on a carrot while pestering a character named Elmer Fudd. He often crept up and surprised Mr. Fudd with the ubiquitous question, “What’s up Doc?” The reason I bring this up is because at the start of the year–well not exactly the start, but February–I had every intention of writing a blog a week or even twice a week. Those first two months (February and March) I wrote eight and four blogs, respectively. In April I wrote three, none in May and this is my first addition to this website in June. So, What’s up Doc? seemed an appropriate question.

Preparation for a Summer Writers Retreat, which had been held in the desert at the Omni Resort in Rancho Mirage, California but due to the quarantine became a virtual workshop, consumed most of my time in May. First, there was the creative portion, where my brain spat out twenty new pages to start my next novel. Then, there was the evaluative portion, where my brain read and reviewed the twenty pages of each of the other eleven writers in attendance.

We initially met the evening of May 31. Then, wrote every morning through June 7, 2020. We workshopped each other’s work in the afternoons. In the evenings we did what writers do: we drank, ate snacks and talked about everything from how the pandemic turned our world upside down to how long we’ve been working with Raymond, our teacher, mentor and sponsor of the retreat. While heat affects the brain in the desert, being in three different time zones–two in the eastern, two in the central and the rest of us on the west coast–challenges the extent to which Zoom can mediate a late night writers jam session.

Since the retreat ended, I’ve managed to finish my third revision of Reputation, formatted the manuscript for the printer and await shipment of copies for my Beta readers. Once these books are distributed I will post an excerpt for your review in the Books section of this website.

In answer to the question What’s up Doc? all I can say is I am returning to my original intention of writing a weekly or twice weekly blog, as I did in February and March.

The Bugs Bunny Show opened with a wide array of Warner Brothers’ cartoon characters marching onto the screen. At the end of the introduction, the chorus would sing, “On with the show, this is it!”