Brambling Along


By Margie Senechal
 
Last week I felt like this racoon. It came when I figured out who one of my characters really was. And yes, it's a major plot twist that I hope readers don't see coming.

Yesterday, in preparations for the big wind and rain event heading our way, I went out on my patio to move things closer to the house as there's no room in garage. We are procrastinating pack rats in my household as my garage will attest.

Remember that blackberry bush I chopped back over the summer? Well, here it is, snaking back onto the patio. Blackberries are a lot like writing a book. 

They are prickly, but worth the trouble of fighting through the brambles. Kind of like fighting through the sagging middles to get to the full fruition that comes with the end.

They have tendrils that snake out and try to capture you. Or in the writing vernacular--plotting.  

They are invasive. Kind of like the idea that worms it's way into your head and won't let you go. Persistent resistant. Even when you think you've put the plant or idea to rest, it comes back, sometimes stronger than the first time. 

And sometimes under the bramble, you find a treasure. When I was a kid, we found parts of an old wood stove under the brambles of the cherry tree--which was our playground.  We pulled quite a few pieces out of the thick, but the one we used the most was an old door similar to the picture.

That door opened our imaginations that summer and all because someone threw an old wood stove into the blackberry bushes.

 I have completed eight books--ranging from a picture book to a psychological suspense--and each one, though unpublishable, is a piece of me. As are all the remnants of novels I have written and not finished. Some will be completed, and hopefully what I've learned along this journey will make them publishable. Some will remain in bits and pieces and that's okay, too. 

And like the discarded objects found in the bushes, our stories rise from the brambles and become the treasures of our soul.

 

Comments

  1. What a lovely post, Margie. I especially like your last line. I can only hope that readers come to think of my work as treasures. But even if they don't, they're still treasures to me.

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  2. Beautiful! It's Liz--I'm at work!

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