Week 5:

Well, I had my first major rewrite. One chapter got a whole new facelift. It went from one voice-that of a teenage boy, to the MC (main character)-a teenage girl. For obvious reasons, a lot of the material was chunked. It simply wouldn’t work. Hopefully, this way I’ll be able to keep a couple of the stories that need telling. Hopefully, I won’t compromise my MC. And hopefully, I’ll end up with a tighter, better story-one with a beginning, a middle and an end.


Thirteen years on this one story and I’m nowhere close to having a finished project. Boy, going over Niagara Falls in a barrel would have been easier. No, wait! According to my good friend and author, Nancy Allen, that wasn’t easy, either. In Barreling Over Niagara Falls: The Story of Annie Edson Taylor Nancy used literary techniques such as analogies, alliteration, rhythm and internal rhyme to tell a real-life story. That type of writing is called Non-fiction.

My book, Mountain Laurel is called Historical fiction-a story based loosely on fact. With this type of writing, the author has more leniency. Family tales can be preserved with a flair of the imagination to pack a wallop. That’s what I want to do: pack a wallop.