learning from myself

meeting with the mentor

So I’m struggling through the story synopsis on the next book, know up until now as “Lakeshore #7.” I have a title I love–The Summer Hideaway–and a fascinating cast of characters (including some long-lost Bellamys) but there are some missing elements. I decided to dig deep into the setting to make sure the setting–a summer on the lake, deep in the Catskills Wilderness–had a psychology of place. I went to some of my favorite texts on writing to remind myself a writer’s techniques in this regard. As always, Janet Burroway illuminated something for me in Writing Fiction, and E.M. Forster’s Aspects of the Novel had a nugget or two. Then I checked the Writing the Breakout Novel workbook by Donald Maass…the index sent me to pp. 178-179. And there was an excerpt–and little writing lesson–from The You I Never Knew, a novel by my favorite writer. Me!

I need to learn to trust myself more. In writing, as in life, you know more than you think you know.