Monday, May 30, 2016

Welcome to the Narrative Arc



Welcome to my new blog, The Narrative Arc.  My dear bride Elaine and I, were as usual, chattering away while walking a forest trail here on Salt Spring Island when we hit upon this title.  Somehow, despite our best intentions to be silent and at one with nature amongst the giant cedars of the rain forest in our backyard, we always break the silence with “book chat”.  We seem unable to walk any distance at all without one of us saying, “Remind me, when we get home to tell you about the stellar passage that I read last night”. Or, “Did you read so-in-so’s blog about the power of the first sentence in a novel?” Or. “What did you think about Greg’s digital marketing ideas for getting the word out about our books?”

And we are off, meandering through a conversation about our passions; reading and writing; fiction and non-fiction; books and blogs; style and technique; the hard work and joy of the writer’s life. Maybe it is the oxygen in the fresh forest air that feeds the desire to vocalize our shared passion for the written word. Come to think of it, we also manage to have these conversations on airplanes or ferries or motoring down a freeway or while cooking dinner. 

The Narrative Arc will be a forum for me to share some of these ideas that are hatched over bacon and eggs or while watching the rising sun paint the ocean a flamingo orange in the harbor across the road. I hope that is will generate a dialogue with my readers and fellow writers, a kind of Noah’s ark, full of ideas worth saving and sharing.

If we follow the basics of the Narrative Arc that we learned in Writing 101, this blog is at the stage where I need to “set the hook”; to tantalize, tease and entice you to keep reading. (Next up for me might be some graphic art lessons, but here is the idea!)




Perhaps the “hook” for writers and wannabe writers is the promise that I will write about what it has been like to start writing books in my seventies and the immense satisfaction and gratification of embarking on a creative endeavor no matter one’s age. I intend to include the trials and tribulations; the agony, the frustration and sometimes the disappointment of a writing life.  I’ll share some of the lessons I’ve learned about overcoming writer’s block, getting out from a dead end scene or chapter, making the choice between self-publishing or using a trade publisher and the realities of marketing books.

For readers, the “hook” might be that I will also use this blog to promote awareness of the very real-world social problems that have smacked Elaine and me in the face during our travels in Southeast Asia. My books and the book that I wrote with Elaine are based on the knowledge that we have gained and the work in which we are involved, primarily in Vietnam.

I hope that you will jump on board the Narrative Arc. Subscribe as a follower, add a comment, ask a question, share, or better yet, submit a guest blog!

Welcome to the ARC!