Monday, February 12, 2018

The Bud, the Rose, My #Writing by Nancy Sartor


MUSE MONDAY


Please join me in welcoming my guest, Nancy Sartor, with a really fun post!

I love roses, love the way they look, smell, feel. I would fill my house with them, except that they don’t last. A couple of days of radiant beauty and a week of browning leaves that drop on the floor while the former blossom looks somewhat like a goose whose hair is falling out. In the odd way a thought about one thing leads to another, roses remind me of my writing.

It's not that my prose is radiantly beautiful (although there are days on which the Muse grabs my fingers, shuts my mouth, turns off the television, disables my games and does the writing. Those days shine so brightly no rose could compete, but they are few and far between). It’s pretty much the reverse. I begin with scraggly, half-drawn cardboard images that sound perfectly wonderful to me. I finish the chapter or scene, close the laptop with a satisfied click and engage in something else. It’s the next day that the thing falls apart.

The next day, I read back through my prose. By the third line of the first paragraph, I’m beginning to suspect someone has stolen this document and changed all my wonderful words. If I’m lucky, somewhere in that mess there is a kernel of an idea or a lovely turn of phrase or a character name that catches my fancy. I go back to line one, hit the enter key about four times and begin anew.

I would love to say at this point that what I write is perfect. Heck, I’d love to say it’s acceptable. What I can say is it’s better, and as I work through it muttering various words my mother would not approve, I finally begin to see the shape of this scene or chapter. Generally, by the fourth or fortieth time through, it has shape and substance, the characters are saying what real people say and I’m beginning to think I might get this finished.

I have one suspense published and two paranormals. They’re all set at least partially in Nashville because that’s where I live and what I know. The suspense, Bones Along the Hill, is set in the funeral industry in Nashville; the first paranormal, Christmas Across Time is set between Opryland Hotel and the Two Rivers Mansion. While it is set in modern day, a good bit of the action takes place long ago. The second paranormal, Blessed Curse is set in addition to Nashville, in tiny Rugby, Tennessee, a historic district that has many of its own ghost stories. The blurb is for Blessed Curse.

BLESSED CURSE. Deeply scarred from her childhood, Jorie Wainright has pledged to remain childless. Fate intervenes to give her a child, but immediately powerful otherworldly forces threaten the baby’s survival. Even though the child’s birth will jeopardize her future with the man of her dreams, Logan Mathis who is the child’s father, Jorie fights to save her unborn. With a psychic connection forged in a mountain mist on the edge of the rational world, Jorie, Logan and four childhood friends engage in a battle that may destroy them and the innocent unborn.

             

No comments:

Post a Comment