What do Cinderella and my new novel have in common?

Good evening!

I've been buried, like many people, under post holiday blech the last week.  Monday, as some might know, was "Blue Monday," i.e., the most depressing day of the year. (Being the first Monday after all the holiday cheer is over.)

So glad we get that out of the way right away.  Now we can focus on the many months of cold, cold, winter sans Christmas lights.

Well, I, for one, have been busy.  My New Year's resolutions have nothing to do with weight loss for the first time in more than a decade. If I lose weight this year it will be 1) a miracle and 2) a happy by product of the other health related things I'm doing for myself this year.  I made an appointment to see my hand surgeon because the non sense ends in 2015.  I'm 47 and far too young to be dealing with the kind of pain I'm having.  Also, I scheduled a dentist appointment.  Not because I'm having any pain...but because I've put that scolding off long enough and it's time to just get the cleaning over with and be done.  Also in my plans are such super exciting things as a mammogram and most than likely a trip to a therapist for my own brain now that everyone else in the house seems to be fixed.

More importantly, however, I've been working, sporadically, yes, but working, on the new novel, "Missing in Manitowoc:  A Nora Hill Mystery".  I have a solid team lined up in support and a plan for this thing.  The first draft is done and now I'm in the very fun part of writing when you have the blank pages filled with words and now you get to add MORE words.  Basically, I'm accessorizing...and what girl doesn't love that?

It's like that moment in Disney's "Cinderella" when the Fairy Godmother gets her dress all on her. I'm starting with sort of a raggedy piece of writing and with the wave of a magic wand...or in this case a lot of talking out loud...I manage to put a ball gown on my plot!

This might seem like a tedious exercise.  For writers starting out, you get to the end of your first draft and you feel like you've just birthed the most perfect baby that's ever been born.  Until your writer's group or your critique partners get hold of it and start asking you to fill in the truck sized plot holes (see what I did there? I didn't call them POT holes, I called them PLOT holes!) and you then go home thinking you're the worst person who ever put words to blank space.

Take heart because while you did not birth the most perfect baby in all the world, neither are the worst writing in history.  A first draft is just that.  No one, and I really mean no one, puts out a clean perfect, readable book in one draft. No one.  And if they tell you they did, they are lying and you should bop them on the head with a feather duster.  (You don't HAVE a feather duster?  What do you use to bop liars on the head with then?)

So I'm at that Cinderella moment in my story when I not only still love it, I want to make it more beautiful than it already is in my eyes.  And that's the most fun a writer can possibly have, that beautiful moment between complete blank space and the dreaded line edit.

So friends I'm off to accessorize my heroine Nora Hill...and you should go forth and WRITE!