Meredith Mansfield, Author

It hasn’t exactly broken the log jam, but stopping for a couple of days to begin reading David Farland’s MILLION DOLLAR OUTLINES in hopes of finding a way to get my Weird Oz Story flowing has helped some. It gave me the chance to see one of the problems I was struggling against–and how to at least ease it a bit.

See, I threw my character into the Jurassic Park version of Oz all by herself. Well, except for a dangerous-looking animal that keeps following her around. I want to throw her in the deep end and force her to start swimming–start figuring out how to avoid trouble or deal with it. Fine. But having only one character in a strange landscape can only work for so long. At some point, she needs other characters to talk to, work with, argue with. You know, engage.

I think I’ve about pushed the limit of how long I can keep her isolated. I need to move up the point at which she gets some allies and maybe a contagonist, someone who wants to pull her off in another direction. Time for some interaction.

Meanwhile, I’ll keep reading MILLION DOLLAR OUTLINES. And explore my stack of ideas for what might be my next project.

Here’s to occasionally taking a step back to get a better look at the whole.