About the Author

Kira Seamon is an award-winning author and earned FIRST PLACE in the 2022 Winter Pinnacle Book Awards in Romance, FIRST PLACE in the 2022 Royal Dragonfly Book Awards in Romance, FIRST PLACE in the 2022 BookFest Awards in Humorous, FINALIST in the 2022 Book Excellence Awards in Romance, SECOND PLACE in the 2022 Bookfest Awards in Girls & Women, SILVER AWARD in the 2022 Literary Titan Book Awards, SILVER MEDAL in the 2022 Global Book Awards, BRONZE MEDAL in the 2022 Readers' Favorite Book Awards, and HONORABLE MENTION in the 2022 BookFest Awards in Coming of Age categories.

She writes cozy mysteries under her name, Kira Seamon, and also her pen name, Krista Lockheart. They are typically filled with characters with her signature charm, kindness, and furry pets! She lives in New London, CT.

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Guest Post

My Writing Routine

I come to writing with a background in the performing arts. I am now retired, but did ballet for 40 years, became a national dance champion, and had many different teachers over that time period. I also studied and performed on the violin and piano. Choreographing and teaching filled out my schedule and I use all of that experience now when I write.

I mention this because I have some different approaches to writing than perhaps other authors. I attended the Craft of Choreography Conference in Seattle, WA and that was a very eye-opening experience for me. It shook me out of the groove that I had been choreographing in and birthed a whole new me over the two-week session! What I learned there was how to experiment and approach choreographing from different angles. This all is directly applicable to how you can approach writing too.

For example, I learned that some opera composers would write the overture to the opera last, after they composed the entire work-which makes sense, if you think about it. Now that you have the entire work complete, you can pick out musical themes here and there and sort them into an overture. Likewise, I learned how to choreograph the last section of a dance first, and then you get to see how you should choreograph the rest of the entire dance, so that it logically leads up to the ending.

This is perhaps quite a firebrand idea to bring to writing, which can seem to mandate that we outline our work, chapter by chapter, before we begin.

Speeding ahead in your thoughts to the ending can allow you to see how the plot needs to develop and how you will build the story and move the characters around like chess pieces on a chess board to fulfill what they will need to do to logically get to the end of the book.

There also are those moments (and they have happened in each of my books!), where I can't quite believe what my fingers are typing and the curlicues of thought that are emerging. Despite outlining the story, despite starting at the end and working backward, there are little details in sentences that seem to get typed almost out of their own accord. This I attribute to being in a flow. As a dancer and musician, I know how to get in a flow. A flow happens when you are doing something that is just a little more challenging than normal. If it is substantially more difficult than what you are used to, you can get anxious. If it is too easy, you can get bored. The sweet spot for getting in a flow is to do something just a little harder than normal, which piques your attention and effort to the best degree.

So you may ask yourself, "Why is it important to get in a flow for writing?" Well, there are many benefits to writing in a flow. Your mind will subconsciously be pulling threads together for the plot, and you are operating at maximum function, so your creativity and imagination are sparking on all cylinders. Contrast that to the many author friends that we all may have who complain about writer's block and struggle with word count goals. Part of this is that I have noticed that many writers are very self-critical, and even struggle with heartbreaking topics like imposter syndrome.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that performing artists don't have imposter syndrome or aren't self-critical, but the very nature of the athleticism that it takes to do any performing art precludes too much disordered thinking. Simply put, if you do not focus when you dance, you can fall out of a pirouette, or stub your foot when trying to jump, so that training builds in a focus that may not be as easy to access when you are sitting comfortably on a chair, at a desk, and typing a story. Simply put, the stakes aren't as high to injure yourself, if you lose focus writing, than if you lose focus doing athletics.

Again, this all may seem far different than the usual suggestions on how to write, but I have earned nine book awards, including three first-place finishes in national competitions, and reviewers frequently praise my creativity and originality. This comes from trying different approaches to my writing. I try to envision the ending and then work backward, as a tool to help me plot the book. I also outline chapters to experiment with that kind of structure. But then, I do not allow self-critical thoughts or any imposter syndrome thoughts to enter my mind when I write, and I allow myself to get in a flow, which results in an almost meditative state when I type. This meditative state allows for a perfectly free flow between my deepest creativity and my little fingers typing on the computer keyboard, unhampered by critical, conscious thoughts, so I am pleasantly surprised when I finish a writing session because there are always certain paragraphs that I don't even remember typing!!

In summary, dear reader, I hope to have touched on some different approaches to writing that you might find interesting to experiment with. These free-form approaches to writing can blast open your deepest creativity and help you create uniquely personal stories that can help you build a signature style. I look forward to reading your results!