We are joined again today by award-winning LDS author, Michele Paige Holmes. If you missed yesterday’s installment, you can click here to catch up.
Michele, thanks for being here with us again today. You are in a critique group with several other well-known LDS authors. How important is a critique group to the writing process?
I wouldn’t be published without my critique group. They have been and continue to be the single best thing I’ve ever done or can do to further my writing. I’m grateful for the imagination and talent God blessed me with, but after I’ve done my best there is still quite a shortfall in my writing. Time and again, our talented group steps up and helps me see the flaws and find the solutions to make my writing the best it can be.
What is your writing schedule like?
Schedule? You think I have a schedule? I have a husband (who works four ten hour shifts a week, is a bishop, and is also a marathoner and triathlete), four children—two of whom are demanding teenagers, and a dog. I write whenever all of the previously mentioned let me get a few minutes alone. I do a lot of drafting while driving carpool (thinking only—I don’t attempt to type and drive at the same time) and folding laundry. When I do get a few minutes at the computer, I’ve usually got a lot stored in my brain that I type out as fast as possible. Then, of course, I have to come back and edit later.
What are you working on now?
Right now I am working on something completely different and incredibly fun. It started as an exercise to cure myself of my bad “head hopping” or switching point of view habit. I also wanted to write something for my daughter who is eleven (and always gushing about fellow critiquers Jeff Savage and James Dashner’s stories). So . . . I am writing a fractured fairy tale sort of YA book in first person. It has taken me completely by surprise in that I’ve found I love this genre and even writing first person. I also love that it is going to be much shorter than my usual romances!
After I finish with that story, I’ve got two other partially completed manuscripts, that are spin offs from “Counting Stars,” that I probably ought to get back to. I also started another Scottish historical last spring, and of course I have a western historical that is finished that I just need to polish up and send off . . . (sigh) Oh, to have time.
I can’t wait to read these books when they’re finished, Michele. I’m a big fan!
Thank you for joining us for our interview with Michele Paige Holmes. If you would like to learn more about her, click here.
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