Pamela LaBud
James Lipton interviews actors on Bravo TV’s Inside The Actor’s Studio to find out an actor’s life story and then explores how artists hone their skills.
Likewise, the Central Florida Romance Writers of America monthly meeting features an author during a segment it calls The Writer’s Studio.
Successful published authors in an hour session share highlights of their writing careers, the challenges of writing, tips and ideas for other authors, and the personal process that they go through to write and publish. Saturday, July 7, romance author Pamela LaBud shared her story with members.
Pam is an extremely talented, soft-spoken and humble person. She’s been writing since age 13 and first published in 2003. She’s written books in multiple genres and also under the pen name Leigh Curtis. Pam wrote the historical romance Spirited Away which became a Double RITA finalist in 2006.
Pam signs her book.
Pam’s other books include If You Could Read My Mind, Always and Forever, The Devil to Pay, My Fair Demon, The Hanging Bride, and five books in the Ride a Cowboy series. Pam has published in print and electronic formats and writes two to three books a year.
Pam shared her writing tips with other authors but the real answer came at the end of her interview when asked how does she do it? Pam said she writes constantly–in her “free time.”
“Don’t give up,” she said. “Keep trying, keep reading, keep writing, keep watching movies…but don’t be mad at yourself.”
When She Writes
Pam said that when she writes she needs to have the TV on and has either movies or favorite TV shows playing in the background.
“No music, because I like to sing along,” she said.
She likes the activity and sound going on which she said probably comes from years of writing in her home while her children were doing their thing, making noise, playing and constantly active as she worked away on her computer.
Writing Rituals
The desk is where I go but I write in bed too.
Writing Tips
- Enter contests, contests, contests: be a contest slut. After four or five contests if you’re good you start winning things. The next thing you know, editors are requesting your work.
- Pam said she has to let a book sit for a while before reading it. Let it got two weeks to a month and go back to it.
- “The key to good writing is being concise,” she said. “Short and straight to the point–especially in today’s world.”
- “A business person says the title has to draw the eye. I think it needs to tell you what it’s about.”
- “I’m not obsessive compulsive but when it a story works, it goes in a circle where the beginning comes back around to the end. That’s when I know it works.”
Other Things
- Pam cannot read within the genre that she’s writing
- She loves everything Ray Bradbury wrote
- Hates rewriting. “It’s work. You can spend hours and hours writing and rewriting.
- Pam wants to write Steampunk and Horror. She’d never write suspense or crime or murder stories involving children.
Follow Pam LaBud on Twitter and Like her Facebook Page. Visit her website PamLabud.net for more information and you may buy her books on Amazon.com
