Life has a way of creeping up on you and taking over and when you have teenagers this "life creep" can be overwhelming to any personal schedule or desire.
This was the past week. Now before you turn away in disgust, thinking I have not done anything with my writing again this week, take heart! I spent almost every night this week in my office doing at least something on this story so I have some updates for you all.
I have pretty well knocked out names for my main characters and that was really helpful. When I was struggling with this I went to the name generators out on the internet and used that to try and come up with names. I am not a fan of these things. The names they produce just seem phony to me. Don't get me wrong I think they are cool but the names they generate never seem to work in the stories I have been working on. If you need a name for a character and are really struggling to come up with one, these little tools might be what you need to jump start your story, but so far they have not worked for me.
The best thing I have come up with for names is just listening and observing. I have one character that I named based on a book my daughter was reading. The main character was Alice. I don't know why that name stuck but it did and I started messing around with it by adding a letter here or there. I finally landed on Halice. I like the sound of it and it fit with the names I have been using.
When I started working last weekend I had a ton of exciting things going on and I felt I could really crank out some scene ideas but I ran into a wall that stopped me dead. This has been a problem with my writing since the beginning and it drives me crazy! I will get an idea that is pretty cool and I will start to develop it when suddenly it becomes dull and boring causing me to stop. To be honest if I look back on some of those first attempts, they don't look as bad now. This can be a lesson for all of us: Leave a story alone for a while and maybe it will come back to life for you after time, kind of like a fine wine.
Anyway I found myself in that spot this week. I hate that! I really do, but I was determined to spend at least spend some time on this project each day.
Did I mention teenagers can throw a wrench in your plans? I have two of these creatures now and they seem to spew activities. I do not dare think I have free time until I check with the calendar. If I do not see purple ink (my daughter) or blue ink (my son) I feel a bit safer, but last week was busy! The quintessential teenage household, something almost every night or, at best, taxi service needed to and from these events. In light of this, my daughter had a play at school on Thursday that she had been working for a "No Talent Night". Normally I would be excited to see her perform because she has some real talent in this area if I do say so myself, but since I was already feeling down because of the wall I had hit, I was not looking forward to this time at school.
The very first play was an interesting one-act that I normally would not be excited about in the least (Other than the fact Alyssa was in it) but, as it turned out, it was the one thing that broke my block! I was so excited! I knew where I was going to start and how the important book in my story would be stolen! The only problem was that this one-act was the first of many little acts and I had to sit through them all!
When I finally got home I quickly wrote down the scene idea and by the time I was done I had three scene ideas. I know, that is not many but it is a start and I have others that are percolating just below the surface, just taunting me and energizing me to move forward tonight as well!
The next two weeks for sure will be no less busy than this past week but with all that is going on with this story I know, Lord willing, I will be in my office at least a little each night!
That's it for now. I hope to improve what I put in these updates but that is it for this past week of writing.
Keep faithfully questing for the Lord!
Bye!
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