– – –
My family just got back from a vacation. We drove several hours to a neighboring state and stayed a few days with my Uncle and Aunt. We had a pleasant trip.

When I was planning for the trip, I imagined that I would spend most of my many hours riding in the car, writing on 24 Days Before Christmas. I imagined that I could have my book at least half way done by the time we returned home. In reality? I wrote a full two pages in the car. Two pages. Hardly anything compared to what I had hoped to accomplish. I did get some writing done though. We had some down time at the house and I was able to spend it productively where my writing was concerned. Altogether I wrote close to two chapters on vacation. Still not nearly as much as I planned, but still good. My mystery is coming along pretty well, though I need to start lining up my suspects. At this point you don’t really know who to suspect and you almost don’t even know if you should suspect anyone in the first place! (If that didn’t sound like a confusing sentence!)

I am having a problem with one of my characters though. His name is Harry. Harry’s biggest problem is that he’s kind of wooden and boring. I haven’t been able to make him “spring to life”! I’m trying to work on it, but for some reason, I can’t seem to do it. I’ve even considered getting rid of the character altogether, but it isn’t likely that I’ll succeed at doing that. I’m rarely successful at deleting any of my characters. That being the case, I need to somehow, bring more life to this character. We’ll see how it goes…

My other goal for our trip, was to read when I wasn’t writing in the car. Not only did I not read very much, I didn’t touch any of my books, except my Bible, during the entire trip. I’m trying to read Davy Crockett’s autobiography. Mr. Crockett had an interesting life, from what I’ve read so far. While the book is interesting, I am finding the grammar a bit difficult to follow and parts of the story lacking in relevance. LORD willing, I will post a review after I finish. Oh yes, and did I mention that Mr. Crockett had an obvious desire to become the president of the United States? He makes it very clear in this book that he wants to move higher politically and that being the president was his goal. I’m only a quarter of the way through the book so far too. I am enjoying it overall though and I hope to finish the book during the next week or two.

I need to go work on reorganizing some bookshelves now…

To the KING be all the glory!

– – –

24 Days Before Christmas is a book that I began to write in November of last year. It was inspired by a conversation I had on Thanksgiving Day with my sister Bethany and some good friends of mine who had read some of my previous writings.

In bed that night, while I was writing down a few notes from the comments my sister and my friends had made about my weaker points in writing, I was hit with the inspiration to write this story and try some of the things their comments suggested. I was already itching to write something with Christmas anyway and none of my other books were focusing on it. So I began… and then our family moved to a new house and I got sidetracked. Now, with the Christmas season only a month and a half away, I think I’m ready to try again and I thought I would share a few of the things I am trying to incorporate and especially work on in this story.

First of all, and rather irrelevant to “improvements”, but still challenging, my sister was begging for a mystery – a murder mystery in fact. She thought I could write one, I disagreed – and now I’m trying to prove myself wrong. One of the main plots of 24 Days Before Christmas is a mystery.

Secondly, I had begun to avoid descriptions of places and things to some extent. One of my friends encouraged me to “paint a picture” with my words. Somehow that really stuck with me and I’m really trying to do that in this book.

Thirdly… being lighthearted. I tend to write on the darker side. At least in more recent works. Not depressing or anything (well I hope!), but not really lighthearted either. Somehow in this book, I have to make the joy of celebrating Christ’s birth and the excitement of the holiday season, blend with a murder mystery. Not in a bad way at all and my idea seems like a perfect blending, but it’s still only in my head, not on paper. We’ll see how it turns out.

There were a few other things, which I won’t mention now. I’m doing a bit of rewriting on what I had already written and then… off I go! I’ll leave those of you who haven’t read it, with the beginning of the first chapter:

“The clouds hung heavily over Evergreen, nearly burying the tiny town under their oppressive folds. The barren trees lining the streets, groaned and trembled under their heavy burdens of white, as snow mercilessly continued to add to their great weight. Snowplows had cleared the asphalt-covered streets, but even they couldn’t prevent new snow from taking the place of the old or ice from creating danger zones nearly invisible to even the most cautious drivers.

The sidewalks looked like melted Rocky Road ice cream – a curious mixture of snow, mud and ice, so often trampled, melted and refrozen as to make each element inseparable from the others.

Icicles dangled precariously from slanted roofs, mingling with brightly colored lights and Christmas decorations. The decorations gave a sense of holiday cheer to the atmosphere despite the filthy pathways and rundown buildings.”

 

To the KING be all the glory!

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