My Love Affair with Coffee

I feel like in between talking about writing and my own writing process it would be fair for me to add in a few snippets about myself personally. These sorts of things may tend towards writing and books, because hey, what part of my life doesn't? We're irrevocably tied together. I'll try my best to keep them separate though; no promises.

So hopefully this falls under the category of things “you can relate to” I mentioned in my first post to this blog. This I'm grateful for, because being able to share my love of coffee has brought many wonderful people into my life. I've made unexpected friendships, learned new things, got life changing news, received wisdom, shared advice and heard some stories I'm not sure I was prepared for, over a cup (or five) of coffee. Tables, benches, couches, on my feet, lying in bed, with a book in my hand, eating homemade cake. All with coffee.

In a way, coffee is the catalyst for so many things that have happened to me. The variety of memories that come with that first deep breath of coffee can take me to a hundred places and revisiting a thousand memories. Forgive me for sounding sappy, but I quite literally have a love affair with coffee. Dark, spicy Sumatran coffees, to be rather specific.

I get some of my best ideas when I'm relaxed, breathing in the warmth of a cup of coffee, it does something to me and whatever that is, I like it. I don't feel at liberty to say it now, but in coming years I'm positive there will be times that I'll betray the confidence that coffee and I share to explain at least a few of the different secrets of my work that's hidden at the bottom of my cup.

This leads to me to wonder, the way I do at times, what exactly triggers this sort of magic for other people. Everyone has something special to them and I'd love to hear more about that sometime, getting into what makes people tick is one thing that really interests me. Anyone who'd like to let me know, please do!

Think you're done? Go back go Chapter One.

If you've read the title of this post it probably feels like very disappointing advice to anyone who's writing anything. I understand you're wanting to stop reading in abject denial. I can wait.

You back? Good.

Because every writer needs to hear this.

One evening when I was browsing around the internet, I found a piece of advice from Neil Gaiman. I don't have the exact quote but it's safe to say the gist of it was this: after a writer has finished a project, they must go back to chapter one and reevaluate it using the knowledge they have garnered from writing the rest of their project.

I personally learned this a little later than I would have liked. As a result I ended up having a substandard first chapter on a manuscript that I had spent my whole heart and intellect working on. While it may seem like a step in reverse to go back to the beginning, once you do it it makes so much sense.

A manuscript is huge and while you may have a layout of everything that's going to happen, unexpected threads of the story always make themselves present during the writing process. That said, if you're like me there's also many things you didn't realize were going to happen when you wrote your first chapter. Now, all of these pieces of the story won't necessarily weave into the first chapter of your manuscript, but it's a safe bet that if you take the scenario there and imagine how the characters within the story would interact now that you know them on a new, more intimate level, something will definitely have changed. Allowing yourself the time to do an edit like this will add unsuspected depth to the story you've already worked so hard to create. You're not going backwards, you're really just paying proper tribute to all the effort you've already exerted.

Another aspect you really need to consider is that in the process of submitting your manuscript to publishers, you'll be only presenting that chapter or even less in most instances. Packing as much atmosphere and mood into your first chapter is important. Use it to draw readers in and introduce them to the voice your narrator has developed throughout the writing of the manuscript. This too applies to the first experience a reader has when they crack a book open in the bookstore to see whether or not it interests them. Either way, agents, publishers and readership aside, let's admit that if you love your work (and I'm sure you do) then you want to do what's best for it.

Once you're able to apply the wisdom of your whole manuscript to the first chapter, you’ll most likely find it opening new potential to what needs to be the best first impression of your life.

Readers, you and I

Writing loses its significance without readers. Sometimes it's as close as friends and family, other times it's as broad as the whole world and then there are the very intimate instances when writing and reading is a solitary art.

Regardless of how it happens, until the written word is read there's something vital lacking in its existence.

I am a reader, I've always been a reader and I will forever be a reader. What I'm trying to say is, we're in this together, you and I.

We have been since my days in first grade when I dragged my copy of the Twelve Dancing Princesses to school and asked my teacher if I could read it to the class. Back in the days when I walked into walls and doors and people because my nose was buried in Anne of Green Gables. I fondly remember sitting in the dimly lit nook of my cousin's closet devouring her long forgotten copy of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban that I had found behind a pile of toys. Even today there's nothing like snuggling under a blanket on a rainy day with a book or tucking my head under the covers and reading by the warm glow of my e-reader.

Stories are my life and the natural course of things lead me to having worlds and minds that sprung, born like magic from my imagination. I am, like Jo from Little Women, forever scribbling. Carrying papers, binders, books, journals, napkins and whatever else I could get a pen on.

So I’m still (in a slightly more organized manner) scribbling, piecing together worlds one sentence at a time. Breathing life into friends who have been with me, journeying life’s path alongside me, in hopes that I can share these incredible characters who I owe so much of my personal happiness to, with you.

This first, short letter is to christen this blog in dedication to readers. Not just people who happen to read this, but to everyone who has ever read and will ever read. Writers need readers, readers need writers; it’s the second greatest cycle in the circle of life. I’m just amazed and grateful that I’m allowed the privilege to be both.

I cannot promise, with certainty, what you’ll always find here, but my sincere hope is that you'll find things you can relate to. The sort of things that will question the way you view ordinary life, things that will inspire you, things that will (hopefully) not bore you and above all, things you can enjoy.