Sara Flower Kjeldsen

To write is an adventure

pexels-photo-891252 (1)

People sometimes ask me if I write to relax. Honestly, for me it is invigorating. As the story progresses, it will often stray from the outlines that I have created.  Often, the characters fight back and have a mind of their own, influencing various turns in the plot. Yes, to write is an adventure.

12 comments

  1. Where better to start reading your blog than the beginning? A great opening that leads the reader down the path you’ve marked with your posts. Once I give my characters a life, I let them write the story. I have my hands full just trying to get a sentence done correctly so it’s best to leave the heavy work to my characters. They know the story better than I. 🙂

      • Yes they do! Jade has been trying to get me through the latest scene. I was fighting her on a couple of the paragraphs. I should have listened more. Now, I think we are almost there 🙂

      • Lol Jade is just so feisty! 😛 I’m glad that you’ve been able to work things out and you’re almost finished the scene. I am working on the 777 challenge btw. 🙂 Almost done!

      • Excellent! I know it’s going to be good 🙂 And yes, Jade surprised me. She is an exceptional Ninja girl but she has shown a soft empathetic side which goes against her warrior code. She was very forceful in her decision to go forward with her plan and I relented because she knows better than I do 🙂

      • Lol the funny thing is for the challenge, it landed on a less whimsical part of the story, but I think it shows at some tension so that’s good. 🙂

        I love the conflicting sides of Jade, and that’s what makes her really interesting. I look forward to reading what’s in store for Jade, and to see what it was that she hoped to do so much that she fought with you over it. 😀 I love having those little fights with characters. I had that predicament with Sarah. I didn’t want to lose her, but she insisted that she would rather stand back and fight than run away with the guys and risk all of them being shot. 😦

      • Oh yes! That was a surprise to me about Sarah but it made the story much more compelling from the unexpected and then Alfred’s steep decline as a result. I felt like Alfred’s motivation to help the others was from his own struggle with depression and Sarah’s loss was insurmountable to him. It’s those twists you introduce that keep the heart rate up while reading 🙂

      • I am glad you feel that way. I’m happy that the decision to let her die for them ended up turning the story in a better direction. I also figure that many readers would have lost someone very close to them, and in some ways, it’s comforting to be able to relate to a character’s grief, and to know that love doesn’t need to know time. They were just becoming friends and yet her loss was traumatizing for Alfred.

      • That’s a very profound observation. I’ve lived that loss in many ways. That made me realize why it resonated so deeply. I could project my own feelings into the story. It makes it very real emotionally.

      • Sometimes the worst lost could be losing someone before you’re able to fully form a bond that you so longed for. It’s very painful. I am happy that it resonated deeply with you, but hopeful that it didn’t cause you much distress!

      • Yes, I think a loss in the beginning when the magic of love and attraction are beginning to bring so much emotion and hope can be devastating. It’s different if the relationship evolves and then something breaks it apart, even death. There is a certain knowing of where that other person stood in your life and you can remain in love with the memory of them but a loss at the beginning leaves you with nothing but the ache of the loss.

        The story caused no distress at all. For me it is a safe and rewarding reflection that connects me to the story and gives it so much more meaning. I am never triggered by the writing of others because I can process it. But, my own writing of stories based on real events in my life can floor me when I first dig them out.

        I’ve found the sting of those memories is greatly reduced by finally letting go of them through this examination and reflection process required to get it into words.

        I wrote of the assault on my girlfriend in the Garden II story. It happened before we met and I never knew until after she was gone and her sister told me of it. I wrote it very graphically to illustrate the horror of it and not to be gratuitous at all.

        A young woman commented that it seared her memory of her own assault and I rewrote it immediately and left it in a more suggestive way without the details and then wrote her to thank her for helping me realize how words affect others.

        You would think I would know better but I was too focused on illustrating the terrible consequences of it and not the impact of it on some readers. I learned something valuable.

        I liked how you handled the gunplay in the Suicides story. It is an integral and necessary part of the story but handled very well. The reader knows what has happened but isn’t brutalized by it.

        I enjoy our conversations. I hope it’s not too much to keep up with 🙂

Comments are closed.