The Ground Hog Has Spoken

I think Spring may have actually arrived to the DC area.  Of course winter tried to show its hand one more time with a final and only snowfall of the cold weather season.  Two days after the snowy day though the weather warmed and I was awaken by birds singing outside my window and the green grass back again.  I am very ready for spring.  In fact, this year the groundhog did see his shadow and that spring was only six weeks away.  I do not often take the word of rodents.  I find them untrustworthy animals but I am very willing to believe this one.

Spring though also means that the busy season is upon me at my real job and it is harder to get time to write.  It also means that when I find time to write it helps rejuvenate me to continue doing my real job.  A word lover like myself may not find as much time to write and the story may not progress as fast as I wish but I love how the story has progressed.  When I think back to my original outline it was simple and helped me begin but the story has evolved.  The characters seem almost real to me.  I can dream about them as if they are real people.  When I began my outline they were just characters.  A part of the story and the plot.  As the story continued and I wrote about their characteristics and traits they became real.

That is how friendships in real life start.  A person becomes a friend once we learn about them and their character.  A writer becomes friends with their characters.  It makes it difficult when life gets in the way of writing though because it almost feels as if the characters call to have more of the story written.  Of course that just may be my mind saying, "I want to write, I want to write." 

I listened to a writer once describe how he would get lost from his own life when he became absorbed into the words of his written story and the characters that pursued his thoughts.  He also said to be a good writer it is necessary to think of your characters as real people whose story you are being forced to tell.  I have come to appreciate that writer's way of thinking.  For me the story is not just about loving words and ideas and the need to put them down and share with others but it is a love of the characters and a familiarization with them that makes them seem like true friends or family.  It may be because their characteristics are pulled from the writer's everyday life and people but really it is because they occupy the thoughts and spaces of a writer's mind until he has to put pen to paper and release them to the world.  What is then born is a story given to a reader who then grows along with the story and characters as they read.

So, the ground hog has said spring is right around the corner, and as I steal away for moments to write he can then maybe predict a story that is closer to reaching the end.