The Seeds of a Story

institutechildrenslit.net
This is actually a close cartoon likeness of me.
Except the desk is missing my clutter, coffee cup,
& "cartoon me" has much tidier hairdo.

Not to state the obvious, but a lot of work goes into publishing a book. Yup. Thousands of hours of labour.

It begins with creating the characters, building the story, and adding details that make the reader avidly turn every page.

To develop your story, deleting words, phrases, and passages that you have painstakingly created can be a painful step.

In the writing world this process is called, “Killing the darlings.” All those cutesy, fanciful passages that don’t carry the story along, although they make you feel like an ever-so-clever writer, have just got to go.

Constructive criticism is crucial and an open mind to receive it, is imperative. A great way to get feedback is to join a critique group of genre specific fellow authors.

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Once you are confident your manuscript is the next best thing to follow Harry Potter’s adventures at Hogwort’s, you begin the Submission Process.

This is slowly followed be the Reception of Rejection. It can take three to six months to hear back from publishers and unlike constructive criticism it doesn’t matter if your mind is open to it or not, it’s a’ comin.'

Then, if you have actually written a decent story, found the right publisher, and you’re willing to listen to their ideas for its future place in the Universe of Literature, you will receive an offer to publish.

For my novel, Spaghetti is NOT a Finger Food and Other Life Lessons this will be a five year process, from the moment of conception to publication this November.

But really the seeds for Spaghetti and the seeds for all my story ideas germinated in me when I was a child.  My mom always looked for free ways to entertain us, so we spent almost every winter Saturday at the Centennial Library, our noses buried in books. My brother and I would grab a stack and race each other to one of our favourite reading nooks. That’s when my love of reading began and was further nurtured by my mom’s love of poetry.

A.A. Milne was our house favourite and our copies of Now We Are Six and When We Were Very Young both lost their covers as a result of our love of Milne’s words.

My favourite poem from A.A. Milne is, Halfway Down.

thelovelys.com

Halfway down the stairs
Is a stair
Where i sit.
There isn't any
Other stair
Quite like
It.
I'm not at the bottom,
I'm not at the top;
So this is the stair
Where
I always
Stop.

Halfway up the stairs
Isn't up
And it isn't down.
It isn't in the nursery,
It isn't in town.
And all sorts of funny thoughts
Run round my head.
It isn't really
Anywhere!
It's somewhere else
Instead!

Fellow readers, when did you first get hooked? Can you remember what book was the “one” for you?

Fellow writers, when did you know, “I am a writer?”