Called “…And the Ladies of the Club”, the story revolves around the members of the Waynesboro Women’s Club and their families and friends covering a period from 1868 to 1932.

Yesterday I finished a review of this book on a Squidoo lens. Because the book is so long, my copy is almost 1200 pages, I found it very hard to give a good synopsis of the story.  So much happens to the characters during that period, it’s just not possible or even desirable to include specific events in a review.

Even so, the lens has already been well received with good comments, many saying they like the sound of the book and might read it. As I’ve read this book twice with an interval of nearly 30 years between the two readings, I hope people do read it. I think it repays the effort of getting through so many pages. In fact, I was so captivated by the characters and their lives that the book never felt too long.

I am somewhat reassured after writing to Seth Godin and getting a reply from him and seeing his and Megan Casey’s posts in the Squidoo forum saying that they are looking into the worst abuses of the system and are definitely cracking down on plagiarism.

Squidoo is a great resource for writers who don’t want to run their own website or find that it is very difficult to get an audience for a small independent site. I really want it to succeed and to maintain the high standards of the best lenses and their writers.

To prove my commitment, I’ve published my latest lens. It’s not going to be a blockbuster because it’s about 19th century writer Wilkie Collins, most famous for The Moonstone and The Woman in White. Some people credit him with being the inventor of the detective novel but that accolade probably belongs to Edgar Allen Poe who wrote the Mystery of the Rue Morgue almost 30 years earlier.

I wish my interests were more popular or that I could get interested in popular topics. Oh well! I’ll just continue writing about things that interest me and hope a few other people like them too.

I’d also like to do some ‘How to’ articles, again I’m undecided about the subject.

When I received commissions to write articles for magazines, it was easy. The editor would ask for 2000 words on a particular subject and give me a deadline plus information if he or she wanted a particular angle. I’d research it using the internet and old-fashioned things like books. While I was doing the research, I’d find that the way I’d tackle it would form in my mind so I could sit down and pretty much write it straightaway when I had enough information. I’d leave it for a day, read it again, go through and take out repeated words and phrases, unnecessary adjectives and adverbs, and reword anything that was clumsy. If I had time, I’d leave it another day, read it again and do any polishing that was needed.

I found that my articles were used without any or much sub-editing because I took so much trouble to refine them myself.

The difficulty I have writing online is that I can choose any subject I like. It’s so hard to decide sometimes. I like it when a topic pops into my mind and I desperately want to write about it. My big problem, particularly on Squidoo, is that I’m spoilt for choice.