Winter 2012 - I am NOT a Sequential Person

So I had my setting, my characters, and the beginnings of a story.  What next? I'm a teacher and everything I learned (and taught) about how to write a story was completely thrown out the window when I started writing.  As a teacher we tell students to start with a "story map" which includes- setting, characters, problem and solution.  Then as they get older you add on things like climax, rising action, falling action and so on.

I had given up on the whole "horror" story thing when I realized that it just wasn't my genre.  I wanted a love story and a story of life lessons. So putting the first "Reverie" behind me, I began to write about a difference experience for Ava Banks.

When I started writing the new "Reverie" all I knew were the basics.  I didn't have a problem or a solution.  I had no idea where the story was going to go. I knew 3 simple things:

1. Ava was living on Rudyard Lake for the summer where she met Jack and his parents.

2. Ava would have very vivid, real dreams where she dreamt about Katherine and her family and her love for John.

3. I wanted there to be undertones of "reincarnation"- I wanted the reader to have a sense of a connection between Ava and Katherine.

And that was where I began.  I just began writing.  Somedays it was a dream scene with Katherine and John.  Somedays it was Ava and Jack and what they were doing on the lake.

I created a file on my computer with different "scenes".  It was fun and creative and I was enjoying what I was doing.  I still had no idea how this was going to become a story, I wasn't sure that was even my goal at that point.

So for months I wrote "stuff", pieces of these characters lives.  It was basically all over the place.  Which is kind of ironic because it aligns with how I live my life.  I don't have a "plan" for life, it just happens.  I don't write down grocery lists or plan meals.  I don't have a schedule for cleaning and I certainly don't even think about next week or next month.  It might be lazy or haphazard but it works for me. Whenever I tried to outline my story it became stressful and I didn't like the story so much then, so I just wrote- whatever was in my head came out through the keyboard.  My style of writing is very stream of consciousness.  I think it, I write it. 

By the spring I had several different word documents in my file.  Each containing separate events for my characters. I was running out of steam and out of ideas.  It was time to start piecing them together.  I literally copy and pasted them together.  I had several working "drafts" with different scenes in different places. I was beginning to see a story developing.  I guess it was what was in my head all along, I just didn't write it in sequential order.  I am definitely NOT a sequential person. 

By the time I had finished putting the pieces together I had well over 150 pages and the beginnings of a story in my file. And I was stumped. I had no idea where to go from there.  I was invested in these characters, I knew them so well. I loved the settings and found that "living" in the 1800's prairie was becoming my favorite.  I began to dream about Katherine and John and Ava and Jack.  I would think about them all the time, they became a part of me!

(Here is what I kinda pictured Ava and Jack to look like.  I never did this for Katherine and John, maybe because I didn't have a problem picturing them in my head- they were always more vivid for me)

However, I still had no idea where the story was going.  I didn't know if I would be able to finish it.  I started to doubt myself and what I was doing.  THIS right here is exactly why I didn't tell anyone what I was doing.  At this point only 3 people knew I was writing and that even felt like too many.  I became very very protective of it.  It was mine and I didn't like sharing it with anyone.  I didn't want to open myself up to questions and expectations.  What if I didn't finish it? What would I tell people then? I didn't want anyone to know I was doing this because it was ALL MINE!!!  Every piece of it was for me and me only and I liked it that way! 

But I was stumped and had no idea how to proceed further in the story.  Summer was quickly approaching and I decided I would take the summer to write and revise and add more to this story, that still had no ending or even an idea of where it was going. 

Was the summer of 2012 when it all came together? 

Until next time,

Do you like to make lists and have a plan of action for your life or are you like me and live like a paper in a wind storm? 

Finding Rudyard Lake

Before I can begin describing the journey of writing, I have to start at the very very beginning and that was finding my writing muse.  I often frequent Google Maps when I am bored and have traveled all over the world using it. Going down to street level, I have visited China, Germany, Australia and various places in the US.  One day, not long after I started contemplating writing, I was traveling through England and I came across a lake.  Being a lake lover I decided to check it out.

I have no idea what it was about this lake but I spent days traveling it's shores and gathering information about it on their website, www.rudyardlake.com.
I don't know the exact moment that I knew I would write a story set on this lake but it seemed only fitting that this would be where my story would take place.  I still cannot tell you what it was about this lake, maybe it was because it was located in England, a place that has always intrigued me, or perhaps it was the fact that I could become almost intimately acquainted with it through Google Maps, but whatever the reason, it just felt right.

So now I had the setting but didn't have the story.  On December 17, 2011 I began writing- I didn't know the details of the story but I knew that an 18 year old girl was living on the lake by herself in the summer.  I sat down at the laptop and wrote out what is now the beginning of the first chapter when Ava goes to the market and meets Elise, James and Jack.  As I was writing this I was also looking for names.  I searched Google for British Sir names and looked through the list until the name Hollings jumped off the page and I knew that would be it.  I don't know what it was about this name but it fit with Jack really well.  Jack and Katherine's names was the only one that I knew from the start.  The others came to me over time.  I remember texting girl names with my friend Sandy but none of them felt right, until she suggested Ava and I just knew that was it! 

On the evening of the 17th, after spending all day writing that first chapter, I went to dinner with my family for my Dad's birthday.  When we got to the table to be seated, I looked at a picture on the wall next to me and it was a building with a sign that said "Hollins Market".  I immediately got chills as I had just written about Hollings Market on Rudyard lake.  This was a HUGE sign for me that I was doing exactly what I was supposed to be doing- writing this story.  I kept this first "gift" to myself and was filled with quiet, personal joy!

Around this time (I'm not sure exactly or if it was before or after finding Rudyard Lake) I had been talking to my friend, Sandy, about writing a story.  Now Sandy and I are about as different as two people can get, yet somehow we go together like peas and carrots (I'd call her my "jinny" but she is already my Cristina Yang).  Sandy was pushing for this story to be a horror story and we had gone back and forth about the plot.  This gave me something to begin with. So I began to write "Reverie" about a young girl living on Rudyard Lake in the summer and having bizarre dreams about a black dog chasing her, a haunted forest and other bizarre ghosties and ghoolies.  I got pretty far into it but I could tell that my heart just wasn't in it.  It was very difficult for me to write in this style and I struggled to figure out where this story should go.  I liked the dream idea and Ava and Jack were beginning to develop as characters, but I knew that I had to change the plot. I have always been more of a flowery, romantic, love story type of person anyway. So I told Sandy that I just couldn't write a horror story for her and you know what?  She still likes me!  That's true friendship!

I have kept the beginning chapters that I wrote of Reverie. I will add a page to this blog with a copy of some of it if you are interested in reading it.  When I started making changes, you will see that most of the first chapter when Ava goes to the market is almost exactly the same.  This part of the book is the most special for me because it is what I wrote the day I became a writer- December 17, 2011.

So with a plot change ahead of me and many many blank pages staring at me, I began to shape Ava and Jack's life.  Bit by bit, piece by piece a shell of a story began to develop. 

My next steps- The winter of 2012- My ADHD style of writing!

Until then,
Have you ever had a tangible sign that what you were doing was right?

It began as a "Reverie"

rev·er·ie

ˈrevərē/

noun state of being pleasantly lost in one's thoughts; a daydream

A little known fact- Double Sunset was originally titled Reverie and was the working title for more than a year. 

I am Kristin Smith Novak, author of Double Sunset and I want to share my story. Mostly because I don't want to forget it! The year and a half between December 2011 and August 2013 was probably the most amazing, thrilling, exhausting and scary time I have ever had in my 46 years! There are so many details involved in the writing of my story that I don't want to forget any moment.  As I get older I find that my mind is a sieve and the little details of my life are slipping out of reach. So if you care to come on this journey with me, I will document what it took for me to write this book because that is really the most important part, at least to me.  It is also that part I enjoy talking about the most.

You see writing this book wasn't about just sharing a story I had locked away in my head, which it most certainly wasn't.  It was about my journey of finding a hobby, something just for me.  I have learned in life that when things start to get stripped away- love, childhood, friends, etc.- you need something just for you.  Something that helps to define who you are not just as a mother, or coworker or friend, but an entity all for yourself.  That is what I was in search of when I first contemplated writing a book. 

But first I had to journey back to my childhood and live in those memories for awhile.  What was I like as an 8 year old, so excited over a tape recorder I got for Christmas that I would recite poems into it for hours? What was I like as a 10 year old writing my first poems in shaky, almost illegible writing?  Who was I when I was 16 writing long, heartfelt, emotional love poems? The fact that I was a writer all throughout my childhood had been completely lost to me.  It wasn't something I did in college as I was too busy learning how to grow up and be responsible (not an easy task for me).  When I got married and began teaching, writing was a distant memory.  Children followed, which consumed every bit of creative energy I had.

And then came the dark years.  I won't bore you with the details but life got crazy and out of control for a long time and before I knew it I was slowly emerging on the other side. 10 years later, unsure of where my life was going to take me but definitely seeing the smog of life lifting.  It was then that I began to remember what it was like to write.  How it felt to realize a person in your head and give them life.  

There was never a time that I said, "I am going to write a book."  I absolutely never even thought, "I am going to publish a book." I just started writing.  It was calming, and peaceful and creative and invigorating.  I wasn't even writing a story at this point, just ideas and thoughts and the occasional few pages of "scenes".  I told 3 trusted people I was doing this and that was it, for a very long time.  I did not want to tell anyone, it was mine and I wasn't ready to share it. I kept it close until I knew I could see it through to the end.  I slowly began to share with a few more people, including my family, what I was doing.  THAT was the hardest part of the whole process for me and I will write more about that later.

In this blog I hope to detail the writing process and the little "gifts" I found along the way that helped shape the story, Double Sunset.  I don't want to forget them for they are just as much a part of the story as Ava and Jack, Katherine and John and Elise and James. At least for me they are.

I really could say it all started with a Reverie but turned into a Double Sunset!

Thoughts for next blog (coming soon): December 17, 2011 was a very important day- the day I began writing the story and was given the first, most amazing, "gift" of them all! 

Until then,

What is your own personal entity, something that's only for you?