A Writer's Valentine's Day

I’m pretty sure this was the first Valentine’s Day where I spent a good chunk of it alone. My hubby’s work schedule meant seeing him for less than two hours and the girls were at school. I was alone and left to fend for myself.  Don’t feel sorry for me though, I went to Starbucks (coffee fixes everything) and ordered myself the biggest size (if coffee fixes everything, then bigger is better).

I sipped my coffee and then got to work lovin’ on my characters. Believe me, some of them needed a lot, I mean a real whole lot of lovin’. My female characters? Great. My male characters? They haven’t been looking so hot. In fact, one of them even changes looks mid story (if you aren’t a writer, let’s just say that’s not a good thing). His name is Levi. In the beginning of the book his hair was brown and his eyes were hazel. Then lo and behold, by the end of the story his eyes were gray and his hair was blonde. Maybe it would be okay if he had magical powers. He doesn’t. I might be able to get away with it if he was a fugitive in hiding. He’s not. He is your simple good guy with no excuse to change his hair and eye color (shame on him). I spent a decent amount of time combing through my story and changing his hair and eyes to the right colors (gray eyes and blonde hair).

I always thought I wouldn’t make the small mistakes like forgetting a character’s eye color, but once the pages start to pile it’s easy to forget a million little things. Unfortunately some of my characters got the brunt of it. I fleshed out Levi first because he was the easy one. After getting his looks back to order I worked out exactly what type of clothes he wore and tweaked his personality. He’s from a noble family, and the biggest gentleman you’ll ever meet. The problem is he can go overboard with being too proper and that is when he starts to get funny (but not on purpose of course)!

My second male character is Oren. He plays a small part in the first book. He’s stoic and mysterious, so I didn’t need a lot of information about him. The problem is that I’m into a decent chunk of book two and I don’t know him. If I was a diligent writer, I would have been well acquainted with him by now. It turns out I did need a lot of information because he is a big guy in book two and he is an absolute mess. He is even more confusing than Levi’s changing appearances (if you aren’t a writer, let’s just say that’s really, really bad).  Luckily, Oren got the ultimate manly Valentine makeover. Hair? Check. Clothes? Check. Cool weapons? Check. Super awesome faithful steed? Check. Hunky personality? Check. (Don’t worry, my husband okayed my use of hunky here.)

My story always needs shaping up, so once the men were taken care of I went to work changing, fixing, smoothing, clipping, and recreating. Editing is tough stuff. I left the coffee shop half brain dead with a bad case of the jitters (apparently bigger isn’t always better), but now my characters “heart” me more, and I “heart” my story more.

Hope you got to do something you love today. Happy Valentine’s Day!