Some people have asked me if my stories ever evolve into something different than I was expecting. Or if my stories ever change as I’m writing them. Sometimes they do slightly, other times quite a bit.
Did you want to see what the changes for one story look like?
I give you Finding Joy
This story was an accident. Well, according to my way of looking at things. I was busy writing other stories and had no intention of writing anything else at the time. Until one morning.
I saw two seconds of an add with a cowboy/rancher dad and his daughter. Then I saw a picture of a red barn on Pinterest. Somehow those things snapped together like magnets and before the day was half over the characters were holding conversations in my head. I just had to start writing.
My first thought was that the story was going to be about the father-daughter relationship and how they were going to help the mom somehow. Instead, Paige, the mother, took over the story.
And instead of seasoned farmers or ranchers, I discovered they were city folk.
I had no idea of writing a story that focused so much on redoing an old house or one about joy. But I ended up doing both. I will admit that it was fun writing about fixing up the house. Except that without realizing it, I had them paint one room 3 times. Good thing I had someone read it. The part of about finding joy made me look a little deeper into what joy is and where it comes from. No, Paige wasn’t perfect, and yes she struggled with finding joy, but don’t we all struggle with that at times? Maybe things that were difficult for Paige wouldn’t be hard for you, but everyone has areas they struggle in. The question then becomes, how do we handle those areas?
With this story I had to talk to two friends who are both midwives and ask questions about things and find out what things could happen and how I could make this other thing happen. I learned a lot.
Gina was such fun to write about. Perhaps because she was so easy! Her personality and enthusiasm for life and adventure are just like mine when I was younger. In fact, my mom said it was me all over again. So, if you don’t like Gina, you probably wouldn’t have liked me when I was young. 🙂
I also ended up cutting some scenes out of this book which almost never happens. I was told that there was too much focus on the painting and fixing the house, so if you want to read about what the upstairs looked like or other things, you can read my deleted scenes HERE.
This is one of the few stories that I created a Pinterest Board for. There aren’t a lot of pictures, but there are some.
I had a hard time designing the cover for this story. I couldn’t find the right house or the right person for Paige. It took a lot of searching and looking to find them.
This was not the story I intended to write, but I think it was one I needed to write.
Have you read Finding Joy? Do you like reading about old houses that get redone? What advice to you give someone who is struggling to find joy in their life?
Leave a Reply and tell me what you think!