Old Tucson
The challenge, when you create a new book, is choosing which characters go along with the main protagonists. For a book this length, you need good secondary characters and some secondary plot-lines. You have this historic period you are setting them into-- which might be your own but in my case is southern Arizona and beginning in the winter of 1886.
Whether today or yesterday, you find out what their community would be like. What were the political issues back then and did they impact their lives? Who do they talk over their problems assuming they are the type to reveal their thinking to anyone? Who will present barriers to their life? What challenges do they choose and which ones are forced upon them by someone else or nature? What are the fun things that just happen, which you didn't plan, but come out of these characters' interactions?
As you are writing, at a certain point, this world will seem as real as your own. It is as though you have reached into a pool and pulled from it characters that at a certain point become fully fleshed. What began as an idea has become a world as real as your own and it's where the magic lies in writing. It is both the challenge and the joy of it.
I particularly recommend such activity in a time such as ours where when you read what is going on in the world, you want to curl up in a hole. I am a believer in being informed and involved in the political choices being attempted or done. Our awareness is critical if we want to remain anything resembling a democracy.
For those who don't know, we are a Republic. We elect leaders to run our system. We vote for them based on believing they follow our own goals and priorities. These are the ones we expect to fight to make this country a good one for us all. When we lose the ability to elect leaders like that, this system is doomed because a lot of what happens once it gets to those leaders too often isn't democracy at all.
This can be very depressing to think about-- whichever political side you take. My opinion is we need to pay attention, be aware of what is happening because what they do does impact our real world. How can we expect to keep a nation that runs on the will of the people if the people can be so easily dissuaded from paying attention? But, the key to a personal, satisfying life, is to do what we can and then let it go. It's a balancing act because how to let it go is the problem.
It is in times like this where I heartily recommend writing fiction whether that be full length manuscripts, novellas, novelettes or short stories. Create your own world and if that's sci fi, fantasy, romance, adventure, pop or great lit, it doesn't matter.
The ticket is finding somewhere fascinating for you to go with your characters and escaping for awhile from the world in which we actually live. Give your fantasy world some interesting prime characters which might be male and female, mother and offspring, friends, enemies, whatever intrigues you. Then start writing the events as they unfold. Consider if that worked. If it didn't, start over. Whatever the case, you want your mind caught up in their world and not your own as a way to get a break.
Sabino Canyon and another way to escape for awhile-- nature
