In writing you have to talk the talk before you can walk the walk. What I mean is you have to believe that you can do it until you actually can. One of my favorite (and oft quoted) authors Sarah Beth Durst talks about how to lie to yourself in her fabulous blog. I'm not quite talking about that, though it is good advice and a great place to start.What I mean by faking it until you make it is something more concrete. I've started to dream big, about the future when Guardians is published and I'll be able to take the "aspiring" part off of my title of aspiring author. So this past week I began to pretend that I was being interviewed about my first novel, Guardians of Cornerstone. Is it presumptuous? Perhaps but no one has heard it but me. And the mock interview was helpful. I began to talk about my characters and what I want people to get out of the story. During the course of my mental interview I was able to make two break throughs in my writing.
1. Where are the parents? As I'm beginning to rewrite/add to the story parents do come in to play but not enough. To me, writing is about capturing human relationships and I've left about a crucial one: parent/child. Your own life changes your writing and as I've been making my way through college my own relationship with my parents has been evolving. That being said, I feel like I have something to say about the topic and what I write will ground the piece in reality even as it's being written in a fantasy world.
2. Kalynn. In my last post about Kalynn I was having a hard time figuring out exactly who she was as a character. While I'm not quite there I do have a better idea of who she is. Kalynn is imaginative to the point of going overboard. In a new scene (not ready to be revealed) she has some plants trap Shana because she thinks there's an attacker coming after her. While creativity and imagination will make her a great Mingler (someone who comes into our world) you know what they say about too much of a good thing. Kalynn is easily excitable and sometimes lets her imagination get the better of her.
It's a confidence boost to pretend that some big newspaper or tv show is interviewing you because if you can picture it in your head then it's already a possibility. While the whole visualization thing may sound cheesy (and it does) it also just may work.
On a completely unrelated note be sure to go to The Notebook tab and read an update to my Pillow Fort story as well as a completely new one
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