The Bookish End: Falling in Love with Your Story

Falling in Love with Your Story

                Falling in love with your story… Let me ask a personal question, and perhaps you might blush deeply…. Just how many books have you started in Word documents? When the last story idea got old, what did you do? You went and opened up yet another fresh, clean document and started typing. Then, when you realized that the scraps of an idea would just not work without a boatload of thinking and labor, you opened a new document. Repeat. Repeat. Have you covered your ears and started crying yet? Yes, we all have quite a few abandoned things in our folders. Does anybody remember them in notebooks with multiple colors of pen ink? I still have a bunch of those lying around from the pre-laptop stage of my life. Now, I will stop making fun of us writers, and you can dry your embarrassed tears.

WHY???

                Why do we have all those documents that never exceeded 20 pages? Well… I think to put it bluntly, it has to do with love. We never fell in love with our stories. When I was 14, I was desperately searching for a story. Why? I just felt like no document I ever started had the depth and meaning I was searching for. Nothing held what I craved to write. This really goes back to when I was thirteen, I was so unlike my friends, that of course my writing was nothing like theirs. I had a friend who was about to publish at 13. The day she told us that she was going to do that was the day I started writing on my laptop, and in truth, began my serious writing. The beginning story was pathetic. A ridiculous story that my siblings tormented me about (they are quite justified in that). Still, I was afraid under the wise and mature council and criticism of my thirteen-year-old peers, that my writing would never be like theirs. They would never like my writing, and they would be recognized, and renowned, and I would never go anywhere. Well, at the end of 2014, moving into 2015, we moved churches, and since I didn’t email back then, I felt like I had lost almost all my friends. Their memories, especially of the girls who had not always been kind to me, and I felt were writing peers, were always whispering in my ears the doubts. That coupled with no love for the stories I wrote was a bad combination, so, I constantly tried all sorts of stories. The Hunter’s Cry (the best of the bunch), The Nola Fair Trilogy, Carney Castellar, and others were started. Doubt and a lack of love is crippling to a writer. Then one day, I saw a book lying near my door. I had read the book the year before and loved it. There was a certain illustration in that book that had captured my gaze very memorably the first time I read it, but I had not known how to answer the inspiration. I was longing for something within the picture that I didn’t totally understand. I began to reread the book, and I found that the illustration held the same power. This time it was stronger, for the picture inspired my book. I had a one sentence idea, with that I began to write. I didn’t understand what I had begun. Within months, I had finished a respectable manuscript in length. From there it only grew. Now it is nearly 400 pages, and very, very long. The second book is about 100 pages at this time, and is still being written.

What Changed?

                In four words I can tell you what the difference was. I fell in love. I was hopelessly in love with my book from early on, and in that love, I was able to push past any writers block, hardly any encouragement, and even mean criticism. I loved the characters, and the story deeply. This month’s Bookish End is about falling in love, and why it matters.

How does love change everything?

                It becomes a pastime and joy rather than a grueling experience where you grope for what comes next. When the characters become real, you don’t want to be separated from them, and so you write about them. You love the place. When summer is 90+ degrees and blazingly hot, AC is wonderful. While under the AC, you write so you can feel the cool mists of a deep forest on your face. When you love it so much, you want it to be the best it can be, so you work hard so others can understand this love. It isn’t work anymore. It is a labor of love. This love will carry you through the doubt. The love makes you loyal.

How do you fall in love?

                For me, there are two things that I did that I think really swept me off my feet. One was that a certain character became a dear and close friend to me. I actually made up the name of this character, but am not going to share it yet. The second factor was me. I am super extroverted and love adventure. The book became my portal to this adventure. The heroine is very much based off of myself. I have never really thought of her and me as two different persons. More or myself with different gifts in a different world. When I really experienced it, how could I not fall in love with it? It really was a wonderful, beautiful thing.  There are other was to fall in love, however. I’m going to make a list of ways to fall in love with your story, and I would encourage you to try at least one, especially if you haven’t been writing your story for a long time.

Ideas

Draw it out/look at pictures. Look at pictures, especially pictures of the other characters. You want to fall in love with them? Fall in love with their pictures.

Think about it a lot. When you go to bed, sit in a car ride, etc. Get a journal and fill out the pages with ideas and doodles. It helps a lot.

Personalize it. Put tidbits of your life into the story. If you include your life in little bits, it will help it seem more a part of you.

Bookify your life. Let your book personalize you. Everything from room décor to passwords and usernames, let your book come through. I just started a huge map of my book world that hangs on my wall. I have a necklace that links me to the character like me in my book.

Songwriting. If you play the piano, make up themes for your characters. If you sing, then write songs that fit your book. You don’t have to use them, just sing them so you emotionally bond.

Stick to it and do not touch the new document button. Ivie Brookes put it best. Her descriptions of the evil plot bunnies… Oh they made me so happy. I literally felt like a person who has finally found a fellow victim who can understand my woes. If you have never suffered under the attacks of a shiny plot bunny, you cannot sympathize. One solution, if you can managed to keep it in one genre, is to turn the plot bunnies into subplots… And that can help with falling in love. Last April I was constantly thinking about a really sweet story I was coming up with for my third book that came out of the blue. It helps to keep you in love to have a fresh thing to think about related to your story. Anyway, back to the original point, stick to it!!! Make yourself do it. I am highly nostalgic and sentimental about certain silly things… (Do you have any idea how long it took me to get my special stuffy off my bed?) The ability to say I’ve never touched another book document in the entirety of my writing of this series (which has been going for almost three years) is almost sacred to me. I know that is just me, and there are people who aren’t afflicted with severe chronic nostalgia, but figure out a way to make yourself stick to writing it, and stow away those nasty little plot bunnies in a dark hole in the ground somewhere.

Get a friend or sibling to read it. Have your friend be honest, but get another fan on board. The words of encouragement will go a long way in your writing moral. Recently, my brother David has been amazing when it comes to helping me with ideas. So amazing in fact that I am dedicating my first book to him! He is more interested with the subplot, but if he can come up with help on what a medieval rebellion is supposed to look like, that is quite helpful! And one more thing, make sure that you don’t just pick your best friend or close sibling. Make sure that you get a friend who is going to fan about it and be excited about it. Which friends like the genre, and can just devour it. My genre is Christian Fantasy, so, I need to have girls who like that genre read my book. Try to find real fans of the genre, not those who just half-like it. If you write Regency/Victorian, then get a friend who has reread and watched Pride and Prejudice more times than they can count. Finding a devoted fan for your book will mean the world.

Make sure you aren’t writing something that you can’t love. Don’t endeavor to love something you were pressured into writing. If all your friends write modern fiction and you love fantasy, then write what you love. If you don’t know what you’ll love writing, then take a good hard look at what you read/your favorite music/movies. Always write what stirs you. Never write anything that you say “meh” about. Even if it makes you a little different.

Chat with the characters. Yes, go ahead and do it. I’ve had walks in the woods with my characters. Literally.

Start a memoir box. I have a special little box of things that are like little treasures from my book. Look over these things and smile with memory.

Find a Scripture verse that sums up your book. Even if you never mention the verse once in your writing, meditating on the verse will help you. Understanding the truth you write. If you do any Bible journaling, why not theme that illustration off of your book? Maybe when you publish, you could put the verse in the beginning or end of the book.

As a final thought, let’s remember that no matter how much we love our story, always remember that we do not want it to become an idol to us, and that Christ always needs to be our first love. If you love it too much, pride can set in and can cause you to not be open to helpful criticism, and even the direction God wants you to take it.

                What do you think?

      Have you done any of these things to help you fall in love with your story? What caused you to fall in love with your story? Lots of Love, Erica.