Paring Plot Points

Wow. What a year this has been. I resolve to not judge myself for all the time gone by, but to pick up and continue on with a promise to continue, and continue continuing until I accomplish this great task of creating a novel. And there it is.

So, finding my way back to Ireland proved easy in my mind and effortless in my heart. And now a remarkably important section has been wonderfully edited and whittled down to a genius point. I have spent the last few months tossing around the particulars of one character's past, and it came into a clear neat little package this morning!!

I am so very relieved and excited to move on from this section and return to the main thread of the plot. Because while I was trying to figure it out, I found I wasn't able to devote time or attention to any other part of the plot. It was as if I had to spend my energy focusing on this part before I could move on to anything else. I've never experienced anything like it before, but as long as it keeps the story's inertia moving, I'll be able to adapt if it happens again. And now it's done!

It was crazy! It seemed like the whole time I thought it needed to be this long-winded explanation of soooo much and every particular had to be developed and put out there, but when it all came down to it, it was quite the opposite. All this time and brainstorming spent on every different aspect of this particular time in this specific character's life, pages and pages of notes and pages and pages of text, all of it to be succinctly pared into one. single. page. One single scene was all I needed to do the job. I know more will be revealed later, but that's where I was getting lost. I was trying to cram it all in at once. And it had been all wrong. And now, one page did it perfectly.

I do know and am grateful for all the pages of notes and text, however, because I also realize that is where the ability to work the magic of showing the reader characters, instead of telling the reader about characters was able to rise. I feel excited and accomplished about this development today! This was a lot of work and now I can move on! Just thought I'd drop a note here about it. Sending love to all!!

Thank you :) and

cheers

MNT 2 BE

As I am readying to climb back into Ireland, circa 1880s to 1940s, I wonder a little bit what that long break was all about. I am not any less passionate about the telling of this story, nor about the eventual release of it as a book. So I find it incredibly interesting that I could let it "sit on a back burner" for so many months. Maybe it needed to simmer. Maybe some development in me as a person and therefore in me as a writer needed to happen to tell this next part, for this part is going to be difficult. Not in the same way the other hard bits to tell have been, but in a new complicated difficult way, involving a character I have known from the beginning, never liked, and have created a relationship with that will be altered by the bit of the story I am now in the process of creating. But change is good. And seeing what was once good in others, no matter how awful we had deemed them to have become, is all a part of learning how to recognize that everyone has their story and most every cruel human has their reasons, valid or not.

Whatever reason there was for my hiatus, the license plate my daughter pointed out to me today, MNT 2 BE, reminds me that I am doing everything right. Life is all meant to be, and anything I've done or haven't done at this point, is exactly right. And the only part I can do anything about is the present.

This book is good. Really good. And I am thankful it is being told to me to tell to you. So, without further ado, on with the show.

cheers