Room for Improvement

If you were able to take a walk with me through my "writer's" house you would find many rooms.  As you enter you would first come to my idea room which houses the seeds of ideas that I hope one day will blossom into great stories.  As you proceed down the hallway of imagination, you would come to my character room.  This room houses character profiles with  histories of everything I know about my characters, their likes and dislikes as well as the traits which make them relatable.   When writing I frequently visit and revisit this room.  I think of it as a nursery.  My baby (the character) sleeps there and grows into a mature character that my readers will come to care about.  As you move further down the hallway you will  come to a door on the left … the door to the plot room.  This room is unlike the others because it contains many twists and turns and has no walls or ceiling.  In other words, it has no boundaries or limitations.  Being a plot driven author, I must confess this is my favorite room.  You can usually find me here exploring its endless possibilities.   Construction is constantly ongoing in each of these rooms.

Although most of the time I live happily in my "writer's" house, I do venture out on occasion to writer's group meetings and workshops.   These meetings and workshops help provide me with the building materials needed in the construction of my "writer's" house.  When I attend these functions, I gather information that will give light and warmth to the seeds of my ideas, add fertilizer to enrich my characters and nurture my plots to help grow a strong and healthy novel.

All this information, these tools and building materials are kept in the largest room in my "writer's" house … the room for improvement.  I ask myself if this room will ever get smaller or cease to exist but I know the answer is no.  At great risk of being cliché, I recall the saying, "you learn something new every day" and I, for one, embrace that concept.  Everything I learn is mine forever and can never be taken away from me, but can only help me build my "writer's" house.  As I proceed with my writing career and use these tools, I see improvement in my ideas, character development and plots and take pride in knowing that one day these words will be used as tools in someone else's arsenal of building materials helping them build their "writer's house".

Gerri Brousseau

Filed under: romance