A Story of a Beach Story

If you have read my last post, you know I contracted Lyme Disease, which has made me eternally tired. If you read the post before that, you know that I’d started a new story. Except, being sick caused progress to stop on the story. Which was a bummer.

The story takes place at the beach. I love going to the beach. I enjoy listening to the waves hit the shore, the cries of the seagulls and people laughing and having a good time while I sit in the sand watching said waves, seagulls, and people. The reason I love it so much is probably because I don’t live close to any beaches. The closest I’ve got is Lake Erie, and even that is a bit of a hike to get to.

Also, if you read my post ‘Pushing Forward-More Stories in the Works’ then you know that after trying to make notes and do an outline of a story, that I finally gave up and just started writing the story with no pre-planning.

I was having great fun with it. Then I became dead tired again to the point I didn’t have the energy to do much of anything. My progress came to a standstill.

When I felt a little better, I worked on that story some. Except it didn’t feel as much fun as before. Which I think was because of my illness.

Falling into Fall

Before I knew it, the trees were changing colors; the weather became cooler and my beach story languished on my hard drive. I love autumn as much as I love the beach. It’s one of my favorite times of the year and consider myself lucky that I live some place with a change of seasons.

As time went on, I thought, who wants to read a beach story this time of the year?

Well, okay, I would. I’m sure many others would as well. That was probably my cantankerous self talking.

Still, the story was in the back of my mind. Way back, but there. Debating about what to do, I finally gave up work on that story. I wanted something tied more to the current season. I don’t know why. Honestly, I don’t. For some reason, I seem to be tied to the seasons, and when I think about it, it’s sort of weird. <shrugs> Oh well.

So I did the logical thing and wrote something set in Autumn, only I didn’t get far. Another tired spell hit me, and I became frustrated. The rate of speed I was going it might be Spring when I got the Autumn story finished.

Let’s have some snow!

After I finished Finding Beauty, I had started a story with a snowed-in trope. I’d run into issues with it, and finally thought the idea was dumb and abandoned it. Only that dumb story would flutter across my brain from time to time.

In a tired state, I looked at what all I’d done on it. What I’d written, the parts I’d discarded, all the notes and my sad attempt at outlining the story. As I did, I thought, gee this isn’t dumb like I thought it was. It’s actually got a lot of good going for it.

I reread everything I had, more than once, made a few changes. There were rough spots and parts that weren’t gelling together like I wanted. I did a new rough outline of what I thought was going to happen, and then next thing I knew, I was totally immersed in this project again.

Lessons Learned

There were many. The important thing is to remember the lessons to make them stick. Yeah, I’m still working on that.

One of the biggest things I learned is when you fall out of the habit of writing, it’s hard to get it going again. The way I did it was to take things slowly. I worked on this story daily, even if it was just for ten or fifteen minutes a day. Amazing how much that really helped.

The other thing is, despite what life throws at you, keep moving forward. Last year when I wrote Finding Beauty, I had so much going on it was unreal. A family member had taken a turn for the worse and I had to step up to be a twenty-four-hour care taker. To say it was stressful and disheartening is the understatement of the century. However, working on a story got me through it.

The family member improved, which brought an entirely different level of stressors with it. (It’s a long, long story.)

This summer when I got hit with Lyme Disease (stupid tick) it really slowed me down on finishing The Billionaire and the Bookseller. What propelled me forward to finish it is I really loved that little story. I adored my characters and the setup. I was determined to get it done.

Looking back, I should have pressed forward with the Beach story no matter what. Doing that might have helped me get through this tiredness and everything else better than I have.

I’m hoping after I finish my Snowed-in story, that I keep these lessons in mind and keep working and become way more productive at last. I already have another story lined up to work on after this one. It’s a story I started after I finished The Gift of Holly.

Yes, I’ve been revisiting old projects. Projects that every once in a while nag at me to do something with them.

On that note, I don’t have a tentative title for this story yet. I have a couple different ones that I’m noodling around in my gray matter. I’m not exactly sure when I’ll have this story out, but it should be before the end of the year for certain - I hope.

I’ve counted the months and figured that this Lyme Disease crap, in theory, should clear up by the end of January. I’m hoping it does.

As for the Beach story, it’s one of those stories that I started that has been nagging at me. So as of now, I plan to finish it at some point next year and have it out in time for beach season.