Spring: a Time for New Beginnings

Spring is just around the corner, at least on the calendar. It's a time to start looking for new growth. A time for new beginnings. Today the sky is a solid blue, as unblemished as a newly-painted wall. The trees are still bare, except for an oak in the backyard that won't give up its leaves until the new buds are ready to pop out, but the sun beams down like the snow and ice of a few weeks ago are history.

If you're mired in the swamp of an unfinished manuscript, one that requires a new breath of life to get it over the hump, now is the time to get your brain stimulated for that final dash to the finish line. That's my situation.

I found a good resource to stir your creative juices. It's The Blog Cabin at Tim Hallinan's website. If you don't know Tim, and you should, he writes the popular Poke Rafferty mysteries set in Bangkok. He writes present tense stories as smooth as any I've seen.

The articles I'm referring to are in a weekly series running on Wednesdays which deal with the subject of Plotting vs. Pantsing. He has a different author each week tell about how he or she writes. They are quite illuminating and most go beyond the question of writing style to touch on other areas of the writing process. The series began back in January. The current offering is Number 7 by Leighton Gage.

Other authors who have contributed include Helen Simonson, Gar Anthony Haywood, Jeremy Dun, Rebecca Cantrell, Bill Crider, and Stephen Jay Schwartz. They offer lots of great ideas on writing. The comments on the articles are filled with much fodder for the creative mind.

Tim's website also contains some great advice on writing in a section titled "Finishing Your Novel." As he puts it, this section is for you if:

"You’ve started a novel but are having trouble finishing it, or
You want to start a novel but aren’t sure you’ll be able to finish it."

Tim's home on the web offers a great store of other writing advice as well. I highly recommmend spending a little time at the Hallinan website.

Now that I've received my springtime rejuvenation, I've gotta get back to writing. See you later.

Chester Campbell.