Spring! (And Creating a Book)

Hi, friends! This morning I noticed my first green leaves on my commute to work! Usually, I don’t see the little development of spring growing around me; I see it all at once, as I open my eyes one morning to be surrounded by lush, green trees.

But today, I saw the tiny green leaves, the bright red buds on trees. And, of course, I’ve been noticing the flowers blooming on trees all week. That’s my favorite.

And it got me thinking about how the development of a story is like the birth of spring. How, you may ask? Well, let me tell you.

Every story starts with an idea, just like every plant that blooms in the spring started as a seed. That seed may have been deposited a long time ago, just waiting for conditions to be right to sprout, or it may have just been dropped and immediately sprinted into growth and development. And this is true for stories, as well. For example, I started a story a few years back that I got partway through and then just stopped. And then I had a new, fresh idea of what I wanted it to be, and it is developing from this old seed I thought was dead.

And while we’re on the metaphor, did you know that seeds can be dormant for thousands (maybe more, I’m a cell biologist, not a botanist!) of years and still grow when placed into the right set of conditions? Amazing, right? And so can a story. You may have had an idea twenty years ago and just now found what you wanted to really make it bloom.

Your seed is growing!

So time passes and you write your first draft. It’s a mess. But, as I recently heard it so eloquently stated, the first draft is simply to make the story exist. This is like the skeleton of the trees from winter. They’re there, but there’s not much to them. Yet.

After the story exists, then we start to make it functional. We rearrange the order of scenes or re-plot the storyline or subplots. These are like the buds and the tiny baby leaves. They are starting to become what we know will one day be a majestic forest full of majestic trees. As long as we continue to feed it sunlight and water and nutrients (feed your ideas and work on the story).

And then we can finally get to the mature story. This is where we get an effective draft, one that tells the story we want to tell and shares the message we want to share. Like the fully bloomed leaves on a tree, they’re finally doing their job of absorbing sunlight and creating food… our book can now feed readers’ imaginations and thoughts.

I’m so happy spring is finally here, and I am loving every minute of the development of my current works. This Cursed Flame is already at the final stage, heading into a summer of fun (you can pre-order it on Amazon and here for all other retailers), Sea of Broken Glass is at the second stage, growing its shoots and flowers, and the Secret New Project is a seedling still making its skeleton. I am in love with all three of these projects (and some other, smaller ones for the future), and I can’t wait to share them with everybody.

So what about you? What stage is your writing in? Or, if you don’t write, what are some books that remind you of spring? Let’s chat in the comments!