Writers: We Sort Through Notes and Dreams…

Writing is a universal human experience, often creating timeless fiction, with topics like birth, death, anger, and hurts. For some it is: I Am the Story God, and I Have Power! 

But we have to ask ourselves: does the work I am writing feel worthy? eternal? Is it deeply personal…and if so, how do I present it to the reader? How do I make it timeless; how do I make it feel like the BONES of an OLDER FOUNDATION.

Because: IT MUST STAND OUT!

As writers, we often ask these questions:

How do I make human experience memorable?

What is special about normal living, and how do I accentuate that, making it unforgettable?

SOME ANSWERS

To please our readers, we must use everyday actions in different ways–sometimes compressing and sometimes heightening. As writers, we must elevate a passage, an action, to make sure that the reader will not forget that particular moment. So…you often look around, finding a way to review your very life.

THE WORK IN PRINT  

Currently, you might read my novelette, AFTER PAPA LEFT, now available as a KDP book on Amazon. The plot: a teenager loses the father who would have loved and guided her, causing her to fall under the spell of a man who pretends to care for her, but is only thinking of himself and his desires. 

There is much more to this complete novel, but when rereading it, I discovered this gem of a story that stood out….thus asking myself, maybe I didn’t need all the other characters and scenes. ALL THOSE NOTES AND IDEAS …

BUT THEN…..there is my FOREVER NOVEL, a work that might never be complete. It’s a kidnapping story with passages that some might object to.

But writers are allowed to create a framework that is symbolic, also metaphorical. Thus in the novel, there are cottonwood trees filling the neighborhood streets and lawns with their “snow”, while the cries of a murder of crows blocks a child’s scream for help. THIS A KEY MOMENT IN THE NOVEL. 

THINGS I LIKE ABOUT WHEN THE COTTONWOODS BLEW 

It starts and ends in the same place: Chicago Community Hospital.

The reader experiences woods, screaming crows, and a large black dog…all symbols of a struggle for safety, the hospital becoming a character. Because, PLACE is always important when you write.

NOVEL ELEMENTS 

Time is compressed. The sun becomes a star. There is Ella and David’s home…but also the house where Sarah is kept. And how do you take a census of the homeless? Sam the Weatherman, an autistic savant, can tell you the weather of any day from years ago. He also knows where Sarah is. 

Dr.Wakefield, Ella’s deceased father, once created a way to draw blood, and better ways to store it. 

IN MY NOVEL: place is normal, except when Sarah flies off a roof.

People are people, except when a woman finally finds her lost sister, who then stabs her with a knife.

Time flows normally, except Sarah must be found before the snow falls.

And Ella’s deceased mother, Cecile, stays silent for most of the novel, except in a final scene when David and Ella are driving to rescue Sarah.

BECAUSE ….TIME, REALITY CAN BE TWISTED IN NOVELS. WE HOLD ALL THE CARDS.  

Early on, Cecile haunts Ella…then David starts to hear her voice too. “Cecile is telling me to do this.”

Kidnapped Sarah tries to save herself by climbing to the roof of the house where she has been kept, she recalling a storybook: the mother saves her child from the naughty people and then they have a picnic.

Aunt Rib, though fighting old age, knows all the family secrets, and must decide when to reveal them. 

And it is also good to know that Sam the Weatherman, a homeless savant, is watching over Sarah.

YOU CAN CHANGE THE ENTIRE WORLD OF YOUR STORY BY CHANGING ONE THING.

Ella must tell this story : WHEN THE COTTONWOODS BLEW. Ella is the ultimate agent of change.