In the Beginning . . .

I'm in the process of starting a new book. I love this stage, where I have just a glimmer of an idea and things happen. Unexpected things.

I love brainstorming. My book, my friends' books -- it doesn't matter. It's making up stuff and making it believable. It's playing with people's lives. OK, they're not real people. but if I do my job right, the reader will be just as invested in them as if they were real. If I do it right, my characters will become real to readers.

Just changing a character's name can skew everything I thought I knew. That happened last weekend. A secondary character told me her name wasn't what I thought it was. So I did a bit of research -- what names were popular in the state in which she was born in the year she was born (G*d bless the Internet!) -- and voila! The character took on a life of her own, supplying me not only with her backstory (personal history), but also that of the hero. Wow.

So my goal for the next week or so is to write chapter one. It won't be the real, final, polished chapter one,  but rather an exercise in discovery. So far -- five and a half pages in -- I've learned two things about my heroine. One of them was completely contradictory to what I thought, and the other adds a good twist to the story.

I'm loving every word.