As much as I’d like to wax on about the plump Mama Cardinal delicately eating seeds outside my window, I won’t. I’ll try to stay on point and blog about writing instead. I don’t know what initially started my love affair with story telling. Probably the love for reading I learned from my mother. Or, more likely, the fact I love words. I love descriptive words in particular. Words that make me envision what the writer is attempting to share. I love words and phrases that make me feel deeply.
Things like: “Stance shifting to the left, Edward stared into the swirling mists. Shrouded in mystery, worn by the ages, the monument stood poised defiantly against the tempestuous sky. It’s creator long forgotten in the murky past, it was here his eyes came to rest in the blood-soaked shadow of the mighty Cross. It was here where it all began. The bane of Drummonds past and present.” While I’m sure this will simplify as I continue to write this historical “romance” – I hesitate to tack the romance onto the genre since it’s more realistic than most romances – this paragraph illustrates my love for descriptive words. Whether that’s a good thing remains to be seen. What makes me feel and create pictures in my mind isn’t necessarily what will do the same for my readers!
While I don’t live by my emotions anymore, I enjoy a story that grabs me by the heart or the gut and doesn’t let go. The words that grip me don’t necessarily have to be eloquent, polished, or polite at this stage in my life. I’m long past the Southern “ladylike” pretentiousness of my younger days. I gravitate towards more visceral instead.
However, I don’t advocate being rude, crude, or vulgar either. That doesn’t captivate me. I can’t embrace the casual profanity of today. I won’t say I never have. I did for a season until it hit me that wasn’t who I was. It didn’t make me feel better or more accepted. I was still on the outside looking in. Added to that, I knew I was capable of expressing myself, for myself, in better ways.
All that aside, I’ve developed an appreciation for more compelling wordage whether in my real life or in my writing. I’m not into “shock” for empty shock value. I am into writing “action” scenes realistically with no apologies or trigger warnings. My B.A. and my secondary life passion is the study of Ancient through Medieval History. When I write hand-to-hand combat, while not overly graphic, it isn’t pretty or sanitized. My goal isn’t to gross my readers out; but to convey the very real urgency of that life-or-death encounter. To make my reader have a similar emotional rush to the one they’d have if they stumbled onto that encounter in real life.
While this train of thought isn’t complete, this post is long enough. I’ll pick it up again later. While I won’t promise another post tomorrow, I will write soon.
Until next time,
Calla
Tori Lennox Author 