August 29, 2014
No such thing as discarded writing
See this pretty little pot? It has been sitting in a dark corner of my yard and growing without any help from me whatsoever. This past spring, when I was planting herbs and Impatiens, I had a few puny plants left in the flats. They looked wilted and leggy. They had no blooms. Worthless, I thought, but I hated wasting them. Javier had once carved out a nice Asian inspired nook in our yard, but grad school, mosquitoes, and the intricacies of Bonsai did him in at last. So, I grabbed one of his abandoned planters and stuck the coleus and Impatiens inside. Turns out shade and a quiet spot were just what they needed. It's too hot to garden in the late summer, but it's the perfect time to return to edits on my next YA novel. I'm at the stage where a full manuscript exists. Not the finished manuscript –just the starting one where Kate and I start digging deep. The job now is to flesh out what's working and to axe without mercy what's not. It's a funny thing how the mind works when it's trying to tell the truth via fiction. It's never simple to let characters reveal what's really bothering them. What always amazes me is how small things, tiny seedlings bloom in a manuscript, sometimes without my notice or help. Obvious parts of a character that eluded me earlier suddenly come into focus. And old scenes that I deleted in earlier drafts find a new life and…
