The World of Dragonfly

It’s a New Year again.  And this year, I had one resolution - to not have any resolutions.  The reason?  I never keep them.  Instead, I wound up getting frustrated about not keeping them and instead rebelled against the reason why I made them.  Take eating healthier.  Very vague.  A nice, vague resolution.  And easy to break.  Which I did so quite nicely and instead went the other direction.

So this year, I have some goals.  Not too many because I don’t want to get overwhelmed.  One?  Get the three novels I have ready to go out on the street by writing query letters for them.  Another, run the Patriots Olympic Distance Triathlon in Williamsburg.  Big goals, I know.  A home run.  And impossible to achieve by just stating that goal.

The key to reaching those two is to develop a series of smaller goals.  So, with a lot of thought and more to come, I’ve done that.  For the writing goals, the steps are baby steps.  Tonight, I drafted a query letter for one of my novels.  Tomorrow night, I’ll revise it, and this weekend, I’ll revise it again with the hope of sending it out to one agent on Monday.  And after that?  I’ll send it to other agents.  Regarding the triathlon, I’m planning on entering at least two sprint triathlons, maybe three, with one of those being in a tidal river.  I’m still working on the smaller goals to reach the sprint triathlons.  All of these?  Base hits.

Maybe, after 38 years of living on this earth, I’ve realized that God works in our lives more by base hits than home runs.  So I’m hoping that these are base hits that will help me reach my goals.

It happened again last night.  I had the whole night free to work on editing, and it didn’t happen.  Why?  That dreaded thing that writers hate.  Writer’s Block.  Better known as The Block.  Okay.  So having the Internet right there and handy didn’t help.  And yes, the evening was mostly a lost cause because of having it, but once I finally, finally started writing, the words began to come quickly.  At least until I had to go to bed.  O for a day when I don’t have to get up early!

So how does one beat The Block?  Here’s what I’ve learned.

• Don’t fight it.  Fighting The Block only makes it worse because it gets me totally frustrated.  And the more frustrated I get, the more I get my emotions bound up in that frustration.
• Do something else.  Turn your mind away from writing.  For me, that meant playing around on the Internet a little.  I checked e-mail.  Looked up the music video for Toby Keith’s “American Ride” and Jason Michael Carroll’s “Hurry Home.”  Both are great videos, by the way.  That and getting the video player up and running since I recently reformatted ate up most of my evening.
• Completely walk away and come back later.  This has always helped when I’ve gotten frustrated.  In college, it was when I was trying to solve physics problems.  Now it can pop up with something at work or during writing.  So The Block is nothing new.  What do I do?  A change of scenery helps.  Or just setting it aside until several hours go by.  I set my mind other things, and ideas for writing pop into my head.  Sometimes, these ideas even come in the shower.

So don’t let The Block block you from writing.  Instead of fighting it, embrace it by filling those frustrated moments with other things.

I know it’s been a long time since I’ve posted something.  I could say that life got into the way, and that’s partly true.  But it also seems like too wimpy of an excuse as well.  I’ve committed to a blog, and now I need to to it.

The Tag Line on this Blog is “Learn More about this writer’s life.”  I’ve covered the life part pretty well, but I realized that I haven’t talked any at all about my writing.  So from now on, I’ll try to occasionally bring up a writing topic.  So for my first one?  Characters.

My principal genre is Christian fiction, also known as inspirational fiction.  I tend to go into two sub-genres, romance (no, sorry, not the bodice ripper types) and suspense.  So what, exactly, does this mean?  It means that I write from the worldview created by my faith.  Some folks may say that writing from that worldview results in boring characters.  I disagree.  We’re all imperfect.  It doesn’t matter who we are or what are faiths are.  We all have strengths.  We all have weaknesses.  We all are human.  That’s what makes creating characters so fascinating.

Why are they fascinating? Creating characters lets me explore human nature.  One thing that I do before writing a novel is to sit down and create why I call a character profile.  In this profile, I use an outline to draft up everything that I can think of about the character.  What do they look like?  What is their personality like?  What are their interests?  What food and music tastes do they have?  What are their strengths and weaknesses?  What types of books would I find on their shelves?  What do they keep in the trunks of their cars?  (Yep, this can reveal a lot about a character.)  What is their past romantic history like?  What is their faith history?  This may seem like a lot of work, and it is.  But it pays off in creating characters that can come alive.  If you’re an aspiring fiction writer, I highly recommend this exercise.  After you complete your profiles, you’ll be very surprised at how your characters come alive.

My current favorite male character is an antagonist.  He’s brilliant.  Devious.  He takes no prisoners and lets nothing get in the way of completing the missions set before him.  Yet though he’s on the wrong side of the law, he’s got a compassionate side that can pop up at the most unusual times.  I’ve enjoyed writing about him so much that I plan to have him in four novels, three part of a trilogy.

And then there’s my favorite female character, a heroine.  Though she’s a heroine, she’s got her own set of weaknesses.  She yearns for her father, who was never part of her life.  This yearning is a huge weakness that is exploited by the antagonist mentioned above.  Yet she’s got a strong, gritty side to her as well.  She doesn’t mind locking horns with the antagonist.  Before she becomes a Christian, she’s well-versed in the less polite forms of the English language and had a lifestyle that isn’t the best.  And becoming a Christian doesn’t mean that she drops all of these characteristics at once.  No, gradually, she relinquishes some of them, but other traits like her grittiness and strength remain behind to be refined.

Okay.  So I’ve talked about how I create characters.  It’s no secret of mine, and I hope that aspiring writers will endeavor to make their characters come alive.  For my next writing post, I’ll discuss ideas.

This weekend is the big weekend. My Web site has been unofficially up and running since last week or so. But this weekend is when I officially introduce it. Am I excited? You bet. This has been a long time in coming. Nervous? A little. Putting myself out into the e-world like this is an interesting experience. But I’m eager as well. If you take a look at the Web site, let me know what you think. For those of you who might not access this blog via the Web site, the address is www.jenniferhaynie.com. Have a wonderful weekend.

Okay.  This is my first blog post ever.  I’ve decided that since I’m in the process of preparing a Web page, that a blog would be an interesting feature.  I do have to thank my Uncle Gene for his research into the world of Blog as well as WordPress for making such a venture easy to do.  So bear with me over these next few weeks as I get the blog up and running completely and the Web site going.  When that happens, I’ll gladly share the site link with you.