In every story I like to try something a little bit different, but I have learned a couple of things about this that I have to keep in mind.

First off, the shiny something new is always more attractive than finishing up the something current–and I have to resist that urge. The something new seems better because it is in my imagination. Once it gets on paper the story in my head disappears and I have to deal with what is on paper. In other words, time to fix things and make it better, which is really the most difficult part of writing. I also hit with every story the point at which I can no longer tell if it is good or bad–it simply just is. That’s the time to trust in the process. There’s a quote from the movie Shakespeare in Love that seems to sum it up best. The wonderful Geoffrey Rush gets all the best lines, but as the play producer Philip Henslowe he notes that even when it is a disaster heading for ruin, somehow it all works out in the end. “It’s a mystery.” (He also says all you really need in a good play is love and a bit with a dog, and it’s hard to argue with that.)

Secondly, as for something new to try out I try to limit this. When I was first struggling with the craft of writing the technical challenges often overwhelmed me. There’s dialogue to get right–perhaps the most important skill since that brings characters to life–and description to make snap, and then there’s viewpoint to handle and scene structure and pacing and dealing with foreshadowing and making sure the characters and the plot makes sense, along with all the bits of punctuation to handle. I quickly learned that taking on one technical challenge at a time served me well. I could work on just that in a story and everything else could be handled in edits.

What if a couple interacted over the years, how would the relationship develop? What obstacles would keep them apart for long periods of time? How would they reconnect? Would they be friends who could just pick up right where they left off no matter how much time came between?

With my novella Remember the technical challenge I set was dealing with time…so many love stories seem to happen over days not weeks or months or years, but what if a love story did take place over years? That idea intrigued me, and I started to dive into the lovely game of “what if?”.

I’m not knocking the instant attraction of first glance, and there are people who know right on the spot ‘this person is for me’ while others don’t get that bolt from the blue. But the slow burn appealed to me as something I had not tried before. It was a something new technical challenge.

Chapter breaks helped a lot with that–new chapter, new year–but then I had to sort out the timeline and figure out what was going on in the world that could cause gaps in the relationship without breaking the relationship. I also had to decide what obstacles, such as age of the characters or status or background or goals, might be slowing down the immediate desire to become more than friends.

All of that ended up being a lot of fun–and some work in editing to make certain I wasn’t putting things out of order. So Remember ended up being a sweet story–I do like a story where not much happens other than lots of banter and getting there eventually. While it is fun to write some action and adventure, love and a bit with a dog goes a long way to pleasing audiences even to this day.