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?