Finding the Words for a Story

Writing is more than just the making of a series of comprehensible statements: it is the gathering in of connotations; the harvesting of them, like blackberries in a good season, ripe and heavy, snatched from among the thorns of logic.  ~Fay Weldon

Blackberry season is over for this year, but my writing season is just beginning to ripen. At least, I hope it’s beginning to ripen. I’m working on getting to know my characters and my setting and what happens next. I seem to be tiptoeing around the what happens next. I’m not sure if I’m afraid I’m going to fall into a deep chasm or afraid that I’m not.

In fact, I dreamed about that the other night. I was walking Frankie – on leash. I’m always walking Frankie on leash which drives both of us a little crazy, but the dog does have a tendency to run off to places I don’t want him to go. Anyway, maybe we had had a stressful walk that day. I don’t remember, but in my dream, we both almost stepped into this huge open hole. Not just a hole that might tweak your ankle. This hole looked ready to swallow us both. Another reason for the dream was that I’d just read a news article about holes like that just suddenly appearing in fields. Our dreams do process things we’ve seen and thought into some pretty weird happenings.

Frankie and I didn’t fall into the bottomless pit, thank goodness. Even in a dream, I prefer not to be swallowed up in a deep chasm. We saw the danger in time in my dream and backed away. But when you are writing a story, sometimes it’s good to fall into that story chasm and see what you can find deep in your thoughts that will help your story.

“It is as easy to dream a book as it is hard to write one.” Honore Balzac.

So, I’m in the hard part of writing my story right now. The something’s got to happen next to keep a reader engaged. That’s what I’m trying to find as I wrestle my muse to the ground and make the words come.

“Some days, success is about luck, or talent, or skill. But most days, success is about wrestling failure to the ground until it screams uncle.” ~Sally Hogshead

I also came across this last quote that somehow seems to poke at me. Maybe I’ll have a characters who can’t be a good example. Will he or she be that horrible warning?

If you can’t be a good example then you’ll just have to be a horrible warning. ~Catherine Aird.

But easy or not, you know how you write a book? One word at a time. Words can be easy. The right words can be hard. And those are the words I’m hunting for right now.

Have you ever had weird dreams that made you wonder?

Fall Newsletter Winners: Lorraine from Wisconsin was the 1st prize winner. She gets the $25 gift certificate from Baker Book House and a choice of one of my books. She’s leaving the choice up to me, but said that she enjoyed The Song of Sourwood Mountain and wants one like that. I’ll have to think about it. She is her church’s librarian, so whatever I pick might be read by several.

The 2nd place winnner is Evelyn from Maine. She won her choice of one of my books and she picked These Healing Hills. 

If you entered the newsletter giveaway, thank you for making  it fun and maybe next time will be your chance to win. I’ll have another giveaway here on my blog next week. Watch for it!