You have to start somewhere....

"Irish rocks and mushrooms" watercolor painting copyrighted by Judi Getch Brodman

I thought that I could illustrate what I'm suffering through with my writing right now by quickly describing my painting process.  Directly above is a photograph of a mishmash of leaves, rocks, ferns and mushrooms that were outside my girlfriend's back door in Ireland.   She just walked by it, but I said, "Hey, look at those mushrooms!"  It was the seed for a wonderful painting... keeping those mushrooms in mind, I threw a lot of color in the background... always keeping those mushrooms in mind.  Eventually everything fell together and those mushrooms, oh those mushrooms danced.  Believe it or not, it is one of my favorite paintings and one that people always ask how I saw something beautiful in that scene.

It's not so different from the writing process I'm going through now... I found the "mushroom" that I loved for a story, a news report that intrigued me, but how was I going to find the "rocks" to showcase that mushroom?  It's a beautiful mushroom, but only something around which to build the story.  I wrote before that the first two or three chapters came easily and then?  Nothing... where was the story going?  Slowly, with the help of my on-line course, Heidi, my teacher, had me think about what my characters were like, answer some interesting questions about them, like what were their regrets, what had they saved, what memory stood out from their childhood, and voila,  a story line appeared.  Slowly, one by one, the rocks appeared and I'm finding my characters' flaws and strengths, regrets and secrets - like the rocks in the painting. As with the rocks, I have to make the story nuggets fit in with the color and shapes and the mushroom.

I'm writing Chapter 10 and it's still hard work, and I know that even when I've colored in all the rocks, there will be many revisions before the story is publishable.  But I'm finding a rhythm and enjoying it.

My advice from my experience this winter is to take a GOOD writing workshop if you can find one... at a local college, a writers group, or an on-line course like the one I took.  It will up your writing skills if the leader is a good one with good insight.  Mine was taught by an author I loved and I worked hard every day for eight weeks.

Well, back to crafting the rocks of my story...

Till,
Judi