There are people and events in history that I find fascinating. I am not great with history by itself. I forget exactly who did what, where, when, and why. At least, when I am trying to learn it flat out. But if I learn something from a story, that’s in there for good. I don’t understand what happened unless I can read how someone lived it. Some events have been covered enough, I feel like I know what happened, but many things haven’t been covered enough (for me, anyway).
So, a while ago, I got my mind set on a particular historical event (you’ll see). I’ve been aware of it for as long as I can remember, but I didn’t comprehend what happened until I saw a film adapation. Even though the film definitely added to the story, I still had questions. So, I read. I watched documentaries. I wanted to understand more. Through my research, I did learn so much about it, but I realized I had to work pretty hard to get that information. I wished someone had written a story that included more, more than the obvious everyone had already seen. As I studied, I found that some people did, but it’s impossible for any one person to cover it all, at least not in the way I was looking for.
I realized, I could do it. Now, I’ll fast forward through the year or so of hemming and hawing where I knew I had a strong desire to write something, but I tried to talk myself out of it. About a year ago, I finally sat down to write. It was harder than I thought.
I knew the main things I wanted to have happen in the story. I knew the ending right away. I had little pieces from the beginning and the middle, but for everything inbetween, I had nothing.
I thought I had failed. I stepped away.
To my great surprise, the pieces came. At random times, chunks of the story would pop into my mind. While I was washing dishes, while I was playing with my kids at the pool, in the middle of a conversation about something completely unrelated. Little by little, the story fully matured. I wrote in each piece as it came to me and over time, I wrote each piece out with description and dialogue. Some days, I could only come up with 500 words. Some days, I had nothing. Some days, thousands of words just poured out.
By the end of August, I had about 85,000 words. My goal had been 75,000. Since then I have been adjusting and fine-tuning that book (with help, of course). This will be my first self-published book. I hope you like it.
Dawn Ludlow 