Aspiring Writers

Image: an AI generated picture of an aspiring writer.

My six-year-old grandson recently sent me a book for my birthday. I was thrilled to discover we share an affection for scary stories. It immediately went to the top of my 'what I'm reading' list when people ask me what books I find moving, important or just plain entertaining.

The book, Grampa and the Haunted Night, has a strong male lead based on, well, me. It recounts my adventures during a long, haunted night. It is a chapter book, one chapter per page, and each chapter includes an illustration. He asked me to write him a scary story in return. It was the most delightful gift, and I will do everything I can to encourage his joy in storytelling and writing.

Storytelling is joyful work, but it is work. People often ask how I come up with the narrative arc in a novel, where the twists, turns and reversals come from, and how I make sure everything aligns from start to finish. Truthfully, I may write twenty to thirty thousand words before I know there is a story worth telling in the idea I'm pursuing. I have abandoned many more manuscripts than I have finished. Abandoning a manuscript is not the same as giving up; frequently I will return to a draft a year or two after I set it aside and now understand what is necessary to keep the narrative arc going. I have at least a dozen partially finished manuscripts on my computer.

Even when I complete a draft without stepping away, the story is not finished at that point. Rewriting is not just about grammar and spelling. Rewriting is where characters come to life, backstories reveal themselves, and major changes to the narrative structure can occur. For example, a beta reader for Love, a novel of grief and desire made a margin note four chapters into the first draft of the novel. "The story starts here" she wrote, and she was correct. Cutting chapters out of a novel is difficult (I was going to say traumatic, but let's not go overboard.) but may be necessary. Losing a character, or a thematic thread, may be necessary as well, or resurrecting a character I killed off earlier in the novel, and it is complicated work to unravel those threads while keeping everything else intact. And I still describe that work as joyful.

On this Memorial Day weekend, I would like to recognize all those who serve our country. My grandmother (one of 14 children) had seven brothers who served in WWII, and all returned home. One uncle, who earned a Bronze Star serving on Guadalcanal and in other South Pacific Island campaigns, used to tell a story about a time his unit was rotated off the front lines for a three day rest, and rather than returning to the rear, he joined one of his brother's units, still on the front lines, so they could spend some time together. they shared a foxhole and fought together for three days, until he had to return to his own unit. Another uncle on my grandfather's side was a B24 bomber pilot who rotated home just a few weeks before his plane was lost over Germany.

We honor these men by honoring what they did: fighting cruelty, hatred and abuse of power.

On another note: I just saw a draft of the cover for my new novel The Devil's Interval, A Novel of WWII Intrigue, and it looks fabulous. I can't wait to share it! Look for the novel later this summer.

Win a free Kindle edition of Love: a novel of grief and desire: I work with Reader's Favorite on the Kindle book giveaway. If you go to https://readersfavorite.com/book-giveaway/love/1 you can sign up for the monthly giveaway. You can scroll through the list of giveaways (over 500 each month) or sort the list by title or author to find Love: a novel of grief and desire and put your name in for this month's drawing. Good luck!