Writing a World

I have been away from blogging for a few months, busy writing a novel and having that special kind of fun that comes when creating a world and filling it with characters who get up from the pages and move and talk.  No longer my puppets, the characters become my friends.  The writing took time and was absorbing.  (When I’m writing I tend to neglect chores, family, and friends.  And my blog.  I would neglect food and exercise if my body didn’t demand maintenance breaks.)

The book is at the printer now.  It will be available, after a final proof review, in late July or early August.

With the title The Cave House Stories and with an exact image in my mind of the Cave House and the surrounding meadows and forest, I decided I had to paint the cover myself.  I got more than half of the image from my mind onto the canvas.  But I’m not giving up writing to become a painter.  Chuckle.

In short, this blog is about the writing process as nourishment for the writer and for the reader.  One writing friend said, “If you have writer’s block, you are writing the wrong story.”  I agree.  The right story will grab you and insist on being told.  It will tell you what to write.  The characters will make decisions on their own and show you a scene you hadn’t imagined for them but one that is needed and just the thing.

Meanwhile, you may pace your familiar home without noticing while you walk around inside that colorful world of the novel with its voices and gardens and special living spaces, with its conflicts and solutions (think chemical solutions, for the right approach dissolves trouble.)  You enjoy the drama even when characters make mistakes in how they treat one another, even when there is sorrow and loss.  These are real within the story and they have meaning recognizable in the many worlds or writer, novel, and reader.

In the end, a novel is a gift to the reader, a gift offered without thought of gain or fame.  A gift of that special truth that can only be spoken in story.

Author: Patricia Mitchell Lapidus

Anyone may walk down the road wondering who we are, how we are supposed to live, and what happens when we die. Some folks like traditional answers. Some folks don't want to spent their time thinking too much. I felt called upon to search these questions in depth and in some surprising places. Each of my books is a story or group of stories about what I found during a wide-ranging journey. My home state of Maine was a hard place to leave. But I knew I had to go. And if I didn't make it back home to Maine except to visit, I did find home in the comfort and joy of discoveries that washed away the pain that had started me on my travels. View all posts by Patricia Mitchell Lapidus