Alive in the Changes

As I see the beautiful tangerine walls of what I call my Sunrise room (bedroom), disappearing behind Swiss Coffee white paint, something tugs at my soul. But the real estate gurus insist that taste-specific colors are a turnoff to potential buyers. That is, unless a soul-mate walks through the door who resonates with my soul-link with tangerine walls! Yes, the house where I've lived for fifty years is going on the market any day now. And a relocation to another state looms in the not too distant future.



People ask if it will be difficult to leave. I answer honestly that I don't think so - but we haven't pulled out of the driveway yet. As a preacher's kid I grew up with moving, and always looked forward to what the next house, school, town would be like. It has crossed my mind that the eagerness to get around the next corner, while to me seems an adventure, could also be a form of escapism. But that's something that will have to be examined at a later time, thank you very much, Scarlett. Right now I have files to sort and boxes to pack and decisions to be made, oh my!



May I send you to: http://chrisguillebeau.com/3x5/transitions/ for a moving and thought-provoking commentary on life transitions that triggered many intriguing responses, including my own. You won't regret visiting Chris's blog.



Chris advises entering into and savoring each moment of any transition, large or small, which will result in a richer experience of life. And so, I have been taking pictures of befores and afters, of last special events - the last Thanksgiving, the last Christmas, the last blooming of the jacarandas. There won't be jacarandas where I'm moving.



But there may be lilacs! And I've missed lilacs for fifty years in California!

Breakthrough!

Challenges: Stuck yesterday (and for several weeks) on Chapter 12 of WIP without knowing why, and without a solution in sight. I've been wrestling with reconciling four different story lines into one in order to create a series. I printed the notes already at hand for all four stories and played "paper dolls" with the slips of plot and time lines.. The only way to resolve the challenge was to place all the stories in one town - not the original plan. Yet a picture, or more realistically, an overall story began to take shape.

Choices: But that brought about its own set of challenges! I had to determine when and where to work characters from one storyline into another without their taking over the current WIP. Still, the thought processes triggered the heat that melted the block. I realized that I needed to create an entirely new chapter, three chapters back. In progress now. But then the domino effect will need to be traced through the ensuing chapters to make sure the desired conclusion is reached. Hey, that sounds like work!

Changes: Being willing to make significant changes in what I considered a finished product, was the catalyst to
a better story line and the resultant thrill of accomplishment. Isn't being flexible to consider alternate routes to the same destination part of the fun?

My dad was a great back-roads adventurer. Sometimes it resulted in getting "a bit" lost. As a pre-teen with a better sense of direction than his, I was often impatient, as I'm sure my long sighs revealed. But to this day, I'd rather take a back road than the highway any time. Poet Robert Frost said it well: :...Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference."

How about you? What alternate route might you choose today to add a bit of adventure to your journey?

Breaking through the funk...

Everyday life is full of choices, changes and challenges for each of us, but so, also, is the writing life.

Challenges: As I purge and pack the accumulation of many, many years in my present residence in preparation for a move later this year, I feel a bit overwhelmed by the writing projects looming before me. Well into the current novel, WEDDING AT NEW CANA, I seem to have developed -- shhh -- writer's block. With the mess of packing around me, I just don't seem to be able to break through.

Choices: Timing! This morning's e-mail brought an invitation from Randy Ingermanson via his own writers' blog: http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/blog/2010/05/24/got-a-question-get-an-answer/ Holler for help and see what kind of lifeline Randy throws me.

I sent my question: Lois Hudson Says: May 25th, 2010 at 7:22 am "I have been developing plot lines for several novels that I envisioned as stand-alones; however, current advice recommends series proposals. The only thing that might connect my stories besides the era (pre- and post-WWII) is the possibility of placing them all in one town. That was not my original intention–even had mapped out the towns in which they take place. Now I’m almost overwhelmed in planning out the way the stories might overlap if I move the characters into the one town. Then I must insert mention of the characters in the current WIP which is already 12 chapters going. Any recommendations on laying it out? I think I need a huge grid of dates, plot lines, where the characters can intersect, etc. It has me frozen. Thanks for the Q&A options."

At least it was action taken. It got me out of the frustrated funk I was in yesterday.

Changes: In the meantime I have pulled everything out of two large - very large - closets to purge and pack. I'm a saver. Everything anybody has ever given me immediately becomes sacred, never to be thrown or given away. Books, especially! But I'm learning. All the household organizational gurus insist we must cut half of what we've accumulated. I've learned that if I do my purging one day, then look at the saved pile the next day, I can usually get rid of another third. That's real change for me.

It's a bit different with the stories. Publishers are looking for series possibilities now instead of stand-alone novels. How can I merge and manage the populations of several towns, and intertwine their stories in such a way that one story emerges from the one before, seamlessly and naturally? Has anyone else dealt with this, or a similar challenge? Tell me about it.

P.S. I highly recommend Randy Ingermanson's blog as well as all the other writing help he offers at his website: http://www.ingermanson.com/. Check him out!

Easier Said Than Done...

Okay, I admit I'm technologically deprived. This has been the most difficult work I've done this day.
I named the blog, then changed my mind and renamed it TBD - that makes sense to me. Then I wanted to change it to TO BE DETERMINED, because I can feel a posting coming on about that. But can't find the way to change the title.

To be determined seems to describe life doesn't it? We have choices to go one way or another, and either way determines an outcome, sometimes expected, many times not. But there is always a choice. Hope I'm making the right one when I push THIS tab...