The horizon never quite looked this good. I was sure of it. I looked out at the watercolored hues meshed together in perfect harmony- pink swirled with the fairest shades of orange and purple. Dark purple clouds loomed nearby threatening the dawning stars. The brilliance of the sun struggled to hang on as it fell closer and closer to its nightly doom.

I felt at peace. That didn’t happen often. But somehow as the afternoon faded into dusk, everything seemed to fall into place. Even the way the cold glass was neutral beneath my touch seemed right. I could see like I’d never saw the world before. I could feel like I’d never touched before this moment. It was oddly fitting how this all turned around.

 

I never felt alive more than I did right now. Funny how he fought this with every fiber of his being. Tried to push me away and tried to make me see the light. Now that we had eternity together, maybe I could make him see there was no other place I’d rather be than with him. Nothing would keep me from doing just that. Not now, and not ever.

 

Music drifted around me. The strings and soft piano sang to my soul, lulling me take my eyes off the ever disappearing horizon and sway over to the open book on the desk. It was black, high gloss, the pages bound in red at the spine and hardcover to protect the precious story between them. My fingers danced over the words, lovingly written in plain scrawl. Easy to read. Mesmerizing with each word. Emotion that captivated you and pulled you into the scenes. I read every word with rapt fascination and fingered the pages with tender loving care.

 

It was the story of my life. The life I had before I became eternal. Those moments were few and far between in my memory but this… I touched the book and longed to remember. This was how I came to be. How we came to be. There was only one thing more precious to me than this.

 

And that was him.

 

I lifted the book into my opened hand and walked back to the window. The light was fading out. Night had approached. Soon the moon would sparkle over the creek. The starts would splatter against the black, shimmering like a million diamonds in the sky. Though my heart no longer beat, my breathing caught as I realized I was towards the end. It would soon be upon me again. The end of the life I’d been skimming before him. 

 

I looked out over the sky. It may be the end of the memoirs, oh, but it was only the beginning of my dreams. 

©cpt

 

As the stars start to come out over the horizon on Friday night, I will be at my local bookstore dancing like I’ve got ants in my pants for the highly anticipated release of Breaking Dawn (the fourth installment of the Twilight Saga and the ending of the story through the heroine, Bella, POV.)  by Stephanie Meyer. I have mixed feelings about reading the end. I know it’s not the end for them. Even if Stephanie Meyer never wrote another word of them, they would live on in my mind. They would haunt the fringes of my dreams and invade my daydreaming space. The relationship between the heroine and the hero is just so tangible, so real, so breathtaking and beautiful. I find myself forgetting to breathe during certain parts because you feel like you’re a voyeur on the scene and one breath will expose you and ruin it.

 

So today is a fairly easy question for everyone who didn’t make it to Nationals (we’ll just go next year!). Has a scene or a book just swept you away to the point it was all you could think about? How about writing that scene? What makes the deepest impressions on you?

Really, what better way is there?

Last night, right before midnight, my contest deadline hit. And I’ve gotta say, I’ve written better. I’ve written a helluva lot cleaner. And I’ve done a better job with characters. But I tried something new. I blazed a path I hadn’t taken before and wrote in third person. I can’t say that it was fun. But I pushed through it. I learned that I’m a first person writer. That’s for sure. I learned that I can write 20,000 words in 12 hours if it’s after midnight. Most of it was crap and had to be revised, but I put an END on it and went about my merry way rewriting and revising to the point I was cross-eyed.

I’ve spoke about winging it before. Winging it is more like controlled chaos (okay no such thing). I’m a pantser. I wing my blogs. I wing my way through writing. And I wing my way through life (most of the time). I suppose that just shows you that I like to break the rules. So if I have to learn something, well, I just do it. I had no idea how to write in third person. I had no idea how I was going to write a story in 18,000 words or less. I really didn’t know what I was going to write about. I wrote the end, then wrote another ending. Changed the beginning- oh I dunno- six times. Took scenes out. Added them back in. Jumped POV (really, the ability to jump POV is not a good thing for me. I’m seriously ADHD with POV’s) and decided that maybe an erotica in first person would’ve been a better choice.

*sigh* Then I figured that might get kinda pervy and ditched that idea.

All the while, I was working my buns off mentally to get this story right. I had my characters right. I could see them in my mind’s eye. I could hear their voice. Interacted with them while I was sleeping. Spent countless nights being up until way past my bedtime with the laptop on and the Word document up. Discovered a new love for heavy metal cellist. And Borders’ clearance sales. All the while, I was thinking about my story. How was I going to make it work? How was I going pull it together when I couldn’t fight my way out of a paper sack at this point?

I wanted to give up. I even thought about it a few times. More than a few times. It would’ve been easy to pretend the file went “poof” and not be able to write another one. But all things good in life are hard to come by. A story is the same way. You never know when it might come to you on how to make it click. In my case, it was 3am on Monday night last week. I had to write it down on my notebook on my nightstand and I woke up the next morning looking at it like it was written in code.

So I guess the point to this most irrelevant blog today is if you don’t succeed the first time, you better not pretend like you lost the file and walk away. No matter if there is chaos going on inside of that little pantser mind of yours. Keep thinking. Keep going. Don’t give up. Believe in yourself.

My question of the day is: Which POV do you prefer to write in, first or third? Why? And have you ever tried the other just to see what you could do?