Spring and Writing by Bonnie Le Hamilton

 

I finally saw a robin this past week.

Though when I posted on Facebook that I’d seen a robin and about spring officially being here, a distant relative who lives just outside of town informed me she’d been seeing robins for several weeks.

Okay, first off, let’s note that she lives in a rural area, whereas I live in an urban area, and I would think more birds would be out in the country than in the city. My opinion only. Though the real issue is that I spent two whole weeks in March stuck at home on muscle relaxants because of a strained back, and I wasn’t even finished with that when I got tendonitis in my right foot.

Ergo I spent most of March and the first week and a half of April stuck in my apartment, and the only time I even went near a window during that time was to see what the neighbor kids were up to because I could hear them laughing.

Needless to say, with little kids running around making lots of noise, there were no birds within sight. I have been out and about since the eleventh, but I never saw a bird in my travels around town. I did hear some chirping outside my window a couple of times, but those were probably the starlings that are nesting in the eaves since I no longer have a row of trees shading my parking spot.

My landlord had all of them chopped down last month.

To be perfectly honest, I was surprised to see that robin outside my place at all. It just didn’t seem logical they’d stop here anymore.

However, on the bright side, I got a lot of editing done while I was laid up. I pulled out an older unfinished manuscript trying to fix the issue I have with it and realized what I needed most was a timeline of the backstory so I could keep it straight when each event that will eventually come into play in the story happened.

I already had a calendar of events in the story. At least the start of it. But I was getting confused about the backstory details, which turned out to include just how old two of the characters were. On re-reading what I have of my manuscript, I realized their ages were too vague and I wasn’t even sure how old they are.

Then, once I fixed that, I realized I might not have their reaction in a certain scene correct, because when I wrote it, I was thinking they were younger, and I honestly wasn’t sure.

So, there I was, staring at the screen trying to decide if I should change the scene, and not knowing if Konnie would know the answer when it dawned on me that my home health aid has younger siblings in the age range needed. And she was right there!

I asked her to read that portion of the scene, pointing out the ages of the three school-aged kids in the scene, and asked her if the two elder ones (8 & 10) would understand the full scope of the conversation going on around them.

The answer was, yes, they would. The five-year-old wouldn’t, but the other two would.

Long story short, I did have the reaction of the five-year-old down pat, but the reaction of her big sisters needed to be changed.

That scene is now fixed.

Now to move on. I need to make other changes because what I did have wasn’t working the backstory in well enough, and some of it was being ignored.

And I have a feeling this isn’t going to be any regular-length novel.

In fact, it may end up as another series.

It seems when I start writing, I tend to include the whole family. And to get the whole backstory in this time, I may have to write several novels. Though I think this time I’ll do what Konnie did to her epic sci-fi and write the whole story from beginning to end, then divide it into books.

And that doesn’t include my epic sci-fi, which needs work, and I have another group of stories, of which only two are completed, but I have several others either started or in outlines.

Yeah, I really need to buckle down and finish more of these stories.

Not sure I will though, especially for the group with two completed stories, because I’m not sure I’m up to the research it would take to write her ancestors’ stories. But I really should finish my sci-fi and the one I’ve been working on.

Do any of you have a series you’re working on?

Anyway, happy writing everyone.