Rediscovering discovery.

I sat down last night after having not done any writing for a while and started plunking away. It was not long before I rediscovered why I love this.

It's been a few months since I finished writing A Ghost of Fire, my first novel (but my third book), and I started in again on chapter two of "A Ghost of Water." To be honest I had a fair bit of anxiety over starting the sequel. I had the first chapter done a while ago and it's available as a preview at the end of A Ghost of Fire, but I began to wonder: can I really do this? I was afraid I'd exhausted everything I had to say about these characters. As it turns out that's not the case.

Because writing (fiction or otherwise) isn't always about putting things on paper which you already know that you know. In large part it's about the art of discovery. Stephen King in his fantastic book, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, explains that for him writing is a bit like archaeology. It's more about uncovering things, sweeping away the dirt to discover things you were unaware were there.

So in a way I'm rediscovering discovery.

I'm discovering that, for me at least, the writing process is just as much about learning something about these strange characters as it is about teaching these characters to the audience. There are moments when I'll write something...and be surprised by it.

Now, I do work from an outline. I have a basic idea where the story is headed but sometimes things crop up which may change that. As I wrote last night I discovered one of the sub-themes of the story I didn't know I was going to have to help the characters wrestle through. And I'm excited to see where it goes.

So as you write (or create whatever it is you create), don't get stuck on just getting the characters or ideas from A to B. Let them live a little. Let them have some run around time. Let them play in the mud and see what happens. You may be pleasantly surprised.
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Website: http://samwhittaker.webstarts.com/
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"A Ghost of Fire" NOW AVAILABLE!

My new novel, A Ghost of Fire, is now available in print and several electronic formats.


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