I'm in Love...with my manuscript

I'm writing a new book. No surprise there, I'm always writing a book. What's thrilling is that I find myself head-over-heels in love with it.

Okay, I know that sounds, well, weird.

But here's the thing, writing a book is hard. Pretty much everyone agrees with me on that point. It's logging endless butt hours at the computer, researching, plotting, planning, organizing, cutting, scouring baby books for that perfect sounding hero name, looking up words that mean the same thing as "look" without saying "look" a million times, thinking hard, burning a few meals, not answering the phone, not shaving your legs, cutting the papertowels into teensy squares so that the kids have napkins in their lunches because oh my gosh who has time to go to the store for napkins, dreaming dialogue, pulling hair out, whining, whining, whining...

And then...a miracle happens.

The scenes come together, nearly effortlessly, as if I'm not writing them at all but simply documenting the events as they happen. Bits and pieces of research pop onto the scene at the exact right moment adding flavor, smells, dialect, sounds, shadows, and colors.

All good, right? There's more.

The super-miracle is when my characters do something so extraordinary, so endearing, so lovingly pure that it takes my breath away. I'm not bragging here. I'm admitting that my characters do stuff that I couldn't possibly have planned for them. Not in a million years. I'm simply not that good of a plotter. But it happens. Thank God.

This, my friends, is where I fall in love. My story takes on a life of its own. It no longer is scene A, B, C with two-dimensional characters from Kimberley's head. No. It's real. It's alive.

Ahhh, happy sigh.

Here's to many miracles in 2011. May you find love in all the right places.

Kimberley Troutte
www.kimberleytroutte.com