Behind the Scenes Pt. II
In my previous blog, I took you behind the scenes for my first two completed manuscript projects—A House of Broken Chords (fiction, magic realism, YA) and Bold North (fiction, YA, light sci-fi)—and now I’ve got two others to tell you about. Technically, there’s three others, but the final one is a poetry project that would require too much time to tackle in this post, too. You can catch a glimpse of it on my Manuscripts page, though!
But, as for these fiction pieces, let’s get to ‘em.
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The 3rd novel: Twice Read Tales
Genres: Fiction, rom-com, contemporary
Where’d this idea come from?
Do you ever read a genre, keep reading it, keep reading it, begin thinking, “I bet I could write a satisfying story within this genre without smut,” and then just give it a go? Well, that’s what I did here.
Romance novels are not my go-to (reading or writing), but I’m not a heartless blob. I enjoy—when it’s well-done—reading along with a character who’s got butterflies and is navigating the tensions of a crush that blooms into something more. Fictional banter has been known to make me laugh. An enemies-to-lovers trope has gotten me more than once. But, and maybe this makes me a prude, I find I’m often skimming the spicy scenes and/or simply prefer a closed door.
So, there’s that piece.
Then there’s also the desire to have a non-smutty romance that’s set with college-aged characters on a campus. I know college romances exist. I’ve looked at lists on the internet to see if any of them appealed to me. For the most part, though I’ve not done an overly-extensive search, I can’t say I’ve found much that fits my tastes.
Another piece of the equation then.
Finally, I, in my young adulthood, have come to adore the movie You’ve Got Mail. Very unoriginal, I know, but when a movie’s iconic it’s iconic. Either get on board with Meg Ryan of the 90s or get out. There’s something about the bookishness of Kathleen Kelly and her Little Shop Around the Corner. It’s the enemies-to-lovers thing, again. The humor is just right. Viewers get to see Kelly and Joe develop in endearing ways. Lots to love.
My writer’s brain wanted to riff off that film, in some way, and it’s no surprise that there’s an anonymous pen pal element to my plot. The letters themselves not only served to propel the plot but presented space for literary discussions (with myself, ha).
I’m under no impression I’ve written the perfect romance because I’ve done it my way and with the things I prefer. For what it’s worth, though, I’ve achieved what I set out to do: Write a satisfying story—for myself. More and more I learn that, if I’m trying to make anyone or everyone else happy with my writing, it’d quickly turn from a treasured hobby to a frustrating chore.
With Twice Read Tales, I had a lot of fun with my main characters, Jules and Nic. Makes me wonder if, after my pirate stories, I ought to try another rom-com…
Character Insight
Jules and Nic, the two MCs, are friends with a complicated history, and, throughout this story, Jules is often wondering about their dynamic. She’s often thinking about the bridge that burned between them, considering how they’ve seemingly repaired it yet it isn’t as it once was:
A person wouldn’t build it [the bridge] the same way twice. They analyze where it went wrong in the first place, they make adjustments, and the bridge is stronger for it. But it’s never the same, and you don’t walk across it without remembering something else used to be in its place. Something about the phantom memory makes you wonder about the structure you do have. As you walk across and trust its support, you can’t help but wonder how long until this one, too, will deteriorate. You wonder at its weakness, and that scares you. And still you will yourself to hope.
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The novella: Hearts in Retrograde
Genres: Fiction, slice-of-life, contemporary
Where’d this idea come from?
Please, don’t think I’m ridiculous when I tell you this novella came to life thanks to a handful of minutes I spent, as an adult, cuddling an old dog while home one Christmas. And by home I mean my hometown of Little Falls, Minnesota.
This dog, Wilson, isn’t the one I grew up with or anything sentimental like that. He is dear, though, and is a beloved member of the folks I claim as my second family. I was staying with them for part of my holiday break, and any good time in their house involves snuggles with Wilson (as well as many other things; this family is a delightful, life-giving blessing to me). On this occasion, while this pup was tucked up on one side of me, I was struck by just how grey he was getting. It hit me that he was an old, feeble fella. Did he even have any good teeth left? Just how quickly was his eyesight fading? And how soon would it be before my next trip back to this house was Wilson-less?
Just the cheeriest, merriest Christmas thoughts, right?
Since I kept a journal then—I’m perpetually trying to be an adult who journals, but I think I peaked with this activity in college—I, naturally, processed these sorrowful emotions through writing. They, as I jotted them down and worked through them, developed into more general themes of how what I was experiencing and feeling, what would happen with Wilson, was just life. It was just growing up, aging, and being a part of the human experience. Change is inevitable. Loss is a guarantee.
So, what I journaled about was the necessity of loving something—a person, a pet, a place, you name it—loving it with your whole heart while you have the chance, and making peace with not only knowing you’ll eventually have to say goodbye but that you may not know when that last goodbye will happen. You must take whole-hearted advantage of the time you have because it will always run out.
And that, essentially, is what the main character, Anja, is learning in Hearts in Retrograde through her relationship with her Opa. The story begins when she’s real little, just a toddler, and stretches into her young adulthood. As far as plots go, it’s not terribly complex. Slice-of-life is the best way I can think to encapsulate it. I pieced together little scenes that are meant to resemble interactions or conversations anyone could relate to.
This is a story I know I had to get out of my head, and I know that because I wrote this over the course of one month. I got done traveling for the holidays and spent the majority of my free-time January of 2020 starting and completing the first rough draft. I remember it being an incredible experience because there wasn’t a whole lot of hemming and hawing about how the characters would behave or what they should do next. Writer’s block didn’t trouble me. It was like the story already knew what it was about and what it wanted to do, and then it picked me in a moment I realized I could write it.
It’s a project that served as an avenue for processing some big emotions, and it’s a project that brought me a lot of peace once I finished it. And I won’t get into it here, but it’s sparked some ideas for connected novellas. So, there may be a sequel of sorts in the future!
Character Insight
The night before Anja heads off for her freshman year at college, Opa encourages her with a piece of Scripture from Oma’s old Bible, a verse about God bringing out the stars by number and calling them by name. For Anja, a girl who’s obsessed with all things space, this is touching to her:
The unfathomable [she thinks], the infinite, held together by an equally unfathomable, infinite Being. Anja had sat for enough Sundays in a pew with Opa to have heard many sermons about how God was the Creator of the universe, was told of His perfect orchestration. She believed it when she peered up at the vast expanse overhead. All those perfectly placed stars? Everything perfectly in orbit as it needed to be? The odds of the universe falling into place like that? It couldn’t be an accident. It just couldn’t.
And to think that once upon a time Anja had an Oma—granted, a lady she’d never crossed physical paths with—who also found comfort thinking about the stars. Thinking about their perfect placement and how they came to be organized as they were. There were no accidents.
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Ideas really do come out of the blue, from anywhere and everywhere, and it’s always fascinating to look back on my completed projects and see how one, little moment developed into something so much bigger that I had to pour out of my mind. It’s never a quiet time up in this brain of mine, that’s for sure, but it’s usually interesting.
As I mentioned at the beginning, I’ve got one more manuscript to share about, but that’s for a different day!
Just want to wrap up today with some gratitude: Thanks for being here and reading, friend☺ Catch ya next time!