I'm working on Sam. Some moments I hate him, some I love him, some I'm thoroughly indifferent. But through it all, I'm working on him.

Closing Thoughts: Sometimes, I have the oddest feeling I'm going in circles. . .

Somehow, a dam has broken. Ideas are popping up like mushrooms. What is this strange new feeling?

Well, all I have now is a mush of ideas, but I like the ideas in all their mushiness. I'm highly tempted to just sit down and write, and go back later in the second draft and organize it all and give it some sort of direction. It has direction now, but it's sloppy. I don't care though, I just want to write it! But I don't think I can start for another week a least. There are still a lot of details to work out. Oh don't worry, I won't work out all the details---if I did I'd never write anything, which seems to be the case with me. But there are certain things I have to work out before I can start at the beginning, and I think it is wise for me to do so instead of jumping right into the middle as I'm tempted to do.

Closing Thoughts: It has now been a week since I've been sentenced to work on Sam for a half hour everyday. So far, I've been late more than once, but I've always done it. Except for Sunday, that is. I reserve the right to have that one day, at least, Sam-free.

By the way, I'm going to up my time to an hour now. A half hour is a triflingly small amount, especially for someone who has the time to do more. I only started with it because I was overwhelmed and didn't want to torture myself for more than half an hour. :-P

I wrote on Monday and on Tuesday, but I was late both times. :-/ However, I intend to be completely on time today, which means I have fifteen minutes exactly.

Closing Thoughts: Life is slowly oozing back into Sam

I haven't worked on Sam today yet. Too busy playing in the snow!!! Don't people get snow days off? ;-) Besides, my cold isn't gone yet. . . Okay, fine. I'll work on it shortly or else you won't hear of me tomorrow and you'll know why. :-/

My phone conversation with Libby and Rachel's comment have persuaded me to explore that idea I wanted to explore, so I'll go ahead and do that.

Closing Thoughts: Libby and Rachel have both been very persistant reminderers. You guys should get an award or something.

I worked on Sam today. That's two days in a row. Aren't you proud? :-P

So, I played around with different ideas resulting in the frustrating conclusion that there is "nothing new under the sun". Every idea I came up with sounded like someone else's!!!!!!! Whether it was Starr's or Libby's or Emily's or other books I've read like Oksana or Jewel of the Pacific. The latter is driving me nuts because I'm interesting in pursuing a similar theme and Linda Chaikin had to cover all of her bases. It's like she left nothing unexplored, so if I even pick just one thing it seems similar to hers. Sheesh!

Basically, I played with the idea of having there be a large group of people quarentined by the king's orders and they are law breakers if they try to escape their quarentined area and everyone is afraid to go near them to bring them supplies and whatnot. I see various trails this could go in, and I'd like to explore them, but I'm concerned about the smilarties to Chaikin's book. It seems like a whole different story in my mind, but I can't deny some obvious connections.

And, for Rachel's satisfaction, I very seriously considered starting from scratch with a female character, but I can't do that. I don't want to get into the plethora of reasons why that won't work right now, but maybe in a future post.

Closing Thoughts: Sigh.

1:00 ---I've gathered my stuff and am sitting on top of my bed thumbing through a notebook searching for a blank page.

1:07 ---I've decided to pin down Sam's inner conflict, thinking that is a wise foundation for building a story off of. So, I referred to a list of possible conflicts I'd made the other day and tried to find one for Sam. Revenge, Despair, Doubt, Rebellion, Greed, Stubborness, Unforgiveness, Hate, etc. didn't work, so I decided to go with fear.

1:10 ---made a list of possible fears, than crossed off all the absurd ones, i.e. fear of dragons, fear of the dark, fear of evil rulers, etc. Made a smaller list of realistic possibilities. The list is as follows. . .

• What if Sam struggled with the fear of loosing someone he loved? That's not so hard to fathom, especially since he's just had that happen dramatically. How would he react to this fear? Would he clam up and stop letting people get close? That doesn't fit Sam. Scratch idea one.
• What if Sam struggled with fear of physical torment? Well, first I'd have to establish what kind of physical suffering it was. No, this fear makes him seem whimpy. Others might not think so, but I do, and I'm the one who has to write him, so no. Scratch idea two.
• What if Sam was afraid of failure? Would he never try anything? Wait, a person can't never try anything. He has to try some things. Scratch idea three.
• What if Sam was afraid of being powerless? He would try to do everything he could not to be powerless and helpless, so he'd fight hard and build up his strength in all areas physical and mental. That's not Sam. Scratch idea five.
• What if Sam was afraid of disease? Well, there are a couple little bitty problems with that. One is that I doubt they had health nuts and neat freaks and the mere possibility of being sanitary all the time back than. He could become highly supersistious, which I believe the majority of people were, but again, that isn't Sam. Scratch idea six.
• He could always be afraid of death. That would work but. . . Why would he be afraid of death? Because he is uncertain about eternity? No. Because dying is so gruesome? Yes. This is a more possible idea than the others, the trouble is I'm still a bit concerned about the "whimpy" factor. If I was starting from scratch and building a character to have this as their central conflict, I'd pick someone strong and macho, then it would be sort of ironic with their personality and. . . interesting. However, I could still make it work for Sam, but there are other dangers. For one, my mind keeps thinking of a favorite character, Walter Blythe. If my mind keeps going there, I'm in real danger of copying him and ending up with a poor immitation of him. Even if there was no danger of that, I'd be stuck with how to make Sam face his fear of death, and I've already explored that in the past only to run into a series of dead ends.

The moral of the story is: From now on, I need to establish the conflict first and build a character around it instead of vise versa.

Closing thoughts: Wow, a half hour goes by fast!

From now on I think I'll use this site mostly to keep Libby, Rachel, and Emily updated on Sam. . . or Samantha ;-) So far I've gotten two reminders, so I'm not likely to forget.

Due to Starr's suggestion, I have ressurrected an ancient and never used blog thing.