Let’s Get Creative!
Hi friends!
Happy Wednesday! I always look forward to my days with you. Thank you so much for taking the time to stop by and spend a little of your day with me.
Thank you so incredibly much for your amazing support of my new release, One Wrong Move! I so appreciate you taking the time to read Christian and Andi’s adventure and for sharing it, too! Plus, the amazing amount of reviews has been such a blessing and so humbling. You guys are the best!
Many of you have kindly asked what’s coming next. I’m happy to announce I’m working on book two of the Jeopardy Falls series! This is my favorite stage of a story’s progress. The creative “play” time. It’s when there’s a blank slate, and all the possibilities lay open before me.
It’s both fun and daunting. I get to dream about everything that may or may not go in the story, but there is a fear that what I envision in my head…all the possibilities won’t come to fruition on the page. That I won’t be able to tell the story as well as I hope.
However, at this stage, I push that fear aside. (It comes back as the internal editor I constantly have to shush, but that’s another blog post.) So I push it aside, and like a kid in a candy store, I go wild. I play with the characters, with my ideas for scenes, with all sorts of inspiration.
Today, I thought I’d share two of the main sources of inspiration I delve into during this stage in the process.
First, I’m super visual, so I like to make a collage of how I envision the characters, setting, and “snapshots” of the feel I want the story to evoke.
If you’ve read One Wrong Move, you might be able to guess what couple book two is about from the pictures below. I’m also tactical, so instead of starting with a Pinterest inspiration board, which I do closer to a book’s release, I go old school. I print out pictures and attach them either to a corkboard or a posterboard. Here’s just the really rough start of book two’s board.
Next, I put together a soundtrack that I play before writing or during revisions. I can’t write with music playing during my first draft unless it’s instrumental. I’ve already collected a solid handful of songs for book two. Here’s one of them that really speaks to one of the characters’ faith journeys. It’s one of my favorite songs, too.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this behind-the-scenes peek at how I begin a story.
Reader Question:
What is something that inspires you?
Blessings,
Dani
