April 2015 – Jewell Johnson Mysteries by Andrea Wittwer

Writing a book is time consuming, brain wilting and exciting. I love the feeling of creating people and having them walk in my mind like fully clothed ghosts while I change their faces, clothing and personal characteristics at whim! These ghostly figures wander through scenes, whisper words, change their minds, laugh, cry and then wisp away in the mist. The brain is a crazy place.

Then I create a gridwork, a frame for my thoughts that has time and place fixed where I hang the characters I have created. This group of characters are stuck in 1971 wearing tie-dyed tee-shirts and bell-bottomed jeans. I chose a time when women were no longer wearing granny dresses but avoided the Mod Squad looks. I remember the innocence and the gullibility of being eighteen but now I have the grit and grime of forty-four years of living to dig through. They are perpetually living at the Linger Inn and Hagie’s Store on Lake Makwa in northern Wisconsin. That was the year that the Fishing Hall of Fame in Hayward, Wisconsin began as an idea.

I love being older and writing from that point of view. I can empathize with all the characters except for Sven and Elin but they passed away and don’t talk much in the book. I try to remember my mom when she was my age but she would be 104 by now. My dad surprised me by being 111 years old this year! I remember what they said and how they viewed certain events and I try to incorporate that into my writing.

I am looking forward to writing “Done Running” – the next book in Jewell Johnson’s life.

Imagine you are sixty-two (I know that for some of you that may be quite a stretch) and you are looking at your grandson’s Kindle. He wants yet another book to read (I understand the place in your head sucks the written word like a black hole) and you have already spent fifty bucks on new reads from Amazon. He read all the free ones too! He looks pathetically at you for the newest book in the series. Seriously, thirty books? You call your daughter to ante up for this title.

Imagine your surprise when she says “just register your Kindle and get it from the library”. What? I rush to my computer and there it is! I can enter my library card number, the library tells me when I can access the book and sends me an email! This is huge! No trip to town, no huge credit card account at Amazon and my reading desire fulfilled.

Imagine how your mind races off to a million new places. Kindle access in every hospital room for patients. Kindles at the Nursing home! Kindles in the school and jails! Kindles in offices downtown and realty offices. You could rent a Kindle from the library. You could get Kindle deals from churches and other social groups. Oh man, here we are! My mind is on “Kindle Fire”!

Article Moving Forward With Hope

Do you see yourself as a failure? Does it seem like everything you do turns out wrong? Do you worry that it will always be this way? John Maxwell writes in his book “Failing Forward”, “The difference between average people and achieving people is their perception of and response to failure.” Have you ever considered the distance between failure and success? Write those two words on a whiteboard, a scrap of paper or in your notebook. Draw a line between the two words. Now, define what complete success means to you; not to anyone else but just TO YOU. When you look at the length of the line, do you define failure as anything less than complete success?

In a line from the movie Princess Bride, Miracle Max says “It just so happens that your friend here is only MOSTLY dead. There’s a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive.” Success is like that. You can decide that you are able to reach success by defining it as something within reach, and failure is at the bottom. Visualize your level of success, are you partly there? Are you getting there? We all need to have high standards for our lives but not set so high and judged so rigorously that we can never reach our goals. In the Bible, Jeremiah 29:11 says; “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Write “Hope” above success and focus on reaching that point.

Month: April 2015

Let The Secrets Die (Coming soon)

Kindle Fire In My Brain!