Friday Challenge!

Going to the places you don't wish to go is the theme of today's challenge. What do I mean by this?  I want us all to look at whatever writing or creating we are doing and see if there is a blind spot we're ignoring. Of course there will be for most of us. I think mine might be parenting and while my books are unfailingly about being a parent I think I'm not reaching the very bottom of the mean pit that lives in my heart about what being a parent is. Oh, don't get me wrong - I have a talent for spinning positive AND I want my writing to reflect the whole of it - not just the shiny bits.

So - big challenge - any ideas how to do this, Jan?

Yes, as a matter of fact, I do.

I want you to take your protagonist and put her in a circle of people that she knows - that live perhaps in the story you are telling. It doesn't have to be a circle of the closest people to her but it could include some of them. It could also include the bit players in her life - the bar tender in chapter four, the Lebanese guy at the corner store, a teacher she dreams about in chapter 18 - you get the idea.  So, you've got your protagonist in a group of about seven people and you imagine that she thanks them for showing up and she asks them to tell her what she's been ignoring about her story that is crucial. And then you have each of them hold the talking stick or the eagle feather or any symbol you like and tell her their truth about her.

I'm about to do this so let me know how it works with you.  What I'll do is imagine it and then write in long hand in the book I keep for all things about 'True' my work in progress.