Cathleen Townsend has arrived from her own blog, The Beauty of Words. I’m so pleased to have her as our guest today. Did you know she won last week’s #BlogBattle?

The word was CAVE, and hers was a finicky one! 🙂 Cave Rendezvous is her winning tale, so be sure to check it out in a bit. But first, hang out here while we get to know our friend, Cathleen!

Welcome to the old blog-a-rooni. Congrats on the win last week, Cathleen. Your cave has inspired all sorts of dreaming and wondering about caves, not to mention their possible attitude toward visitors. 🙂

I only have a few questions for you, but we’re looking forward to your answers! Let’s get started.

Let me emphasize that I drafted seven novels in eighteen months. That’s writing the silly things and smoothing down the obvious rough edges. And then once they were done, I looked at them and realized I had no idea how to edit them.

I’ve spent the last eighteen months learning how to edit the things doing peer critique online and exchanging beta reads. I paid for a content edit, and I’ve really studied grammar and punctuation. And even then, I’ve still got two novels that I haven’t yet touched since I wrote them over a year ago.

I’d say it’s improving my editing skills that’s giving me the courage to share my stories. As to writing them in the first place…I always wanted to. My life (like that of so many others) has been a struggle to survive, and telling stories always got pushed off. And then I realized that if I let it, writing would always be set aside. There would always be things that were more urgent. And my books would never be written.

Once I realized this, I sat down to write. And I didn’t really put my head up until I’d written seven novels. I was afraid to stop–if I did, it might go away. It was such a great gift that I was finally doing it.

The most important part to me was building memories. They don’t even have to be the type of thing that’s particularly memorable. Playing games together in the evening in front of the fire in the woodstove. Doing homework together in the car. Cleaning the house and gardening. We planted hundreds of daffodil bulbs and irises together. We planted trees that are huge now. We rode horses and swam in the local rivers and played in the snow. All of that was part of the fabric of our lives.

With my older relatives, it was enormously satisfying sitting down with them and writing their life story. Most people have a story to tell, and many of them have no idea how to tell it. It really mattered to them, that we were writing down what they’d done, their thoughts and reactions to history as it was being made (a lot of it revolved around World War II). And that someone cared enough to do this with them. It’s something I highly recommend for anyone–sitting down with your older relatives and a digital recorder. They know a lot of the things that never make it into history books, but they’re just the details you need to tell a good story.

My first trilogy of novels was set in the Thirties, after a year of doing oral history interviews. Much of the research was already done. It was meant as an homage to those of the Greatest Generation, who fought in World War II.

Hmm, could we put a time limit on it? Could I try it for a month or two? As long as I could write, it would be a hoot. Super-traveling skills could really come in handy. I’ve always wanted to see the world. Just think how easy it would make your setting research. 🙂