Chapter 29 A writing issue.

Chapter 29

A few weekends ago, my husband, Brian, and I drove down to the Gulf of Mexico, or America, whichever you prefer, for Steven's birthday and stayed the weekend and into the following week. He's a St. Patrick's Day baby.

Brian went to the park to play a few rounds of golf. Steven and I stayed at his apartment, and each did our own thing while visiting off and on. When we do this, I've found he's much more willing to casually tell me what's going on in his life. Asking him gets me nowhere. LOL

When I write I put everything on a thumb stick, so I can take my writing with me. Normal days I write on a PC, but have a laptop, I travel with.

The novel 'Serendipitous Meeting' is completed, so I started a new novel and was on chapter seven. The setting was in New Orleans and was a murder mystery about an Italian Crime Family. It was a little different for me, but it was still a romance.

I was stuck and was tapping my frustration out on the table. Steven asked, "Mom? What's the problem?"

"No problem. Why do you think there's a problem?"

"You're tapping and sighing."

"My heroine, Jasmine has gotten herself into a mess and I can't figure out how to get her out of it."

He shook his head. "I know I'm going to be sorry for asking, but what type of problem?"

I proceeded to explain the mess Jasmine got herself into with this crime family.

"Mom, there's no way on earth that's going to happen."

"It's fiction. What about the suspense of disbelief?" One of my favorite reviewers came to mind. He's always saying that would not happen in real life.

"Mother, you not only suspended disbelief you stomped it to death. You have a crime family assassin miss his shot from ten feet. He's an assassin. He'd be dead if he shot like that."

"It was more like twenty feet and if my heroine dies the story's over."

"Maybe this story needs to be over."

"GRR!"

Steven chuckled. How dare he!!

"Okay, Mom. I see what you're trying to do, but let's change a few things." He offered me a similar but alternative story. I'll admit it was pretty good. "Now, make it your own."

On the way home I told Brian what happened, and said, "I guess I delete my story."

"I wouldn't do that. Since the stories are similar and still set in New Orleans, I'd keep it because you've put in a lot of hours of research. Parts of it you can still use."

"True. That's a good idea."

At home I began writing my new story and it was going well. Until it didn't.

I need to stop here and give a little backstory. When I wrote my novel, 'Secrets of my Confederate Soldier', Bradley was a Civil War ghost in story, who died during The Battle of Chickamauga. He was a friendly ghost, and he helped Paige, the heroine in many ways. Well, I know you're not going to believe this, but I swear it's the truth. During the writing and the publishing phase of this novel, Bradley would smoke cigars in my bathroom. I never saw him but could smell the cigar smoke.

After this novel was published, no more cigar smell. I didn't think about it for years. I left that publisher and switched to the publisher I have now, Kevin. After Kevin and I had been together a few years, he took over my first three novels and started publishing them. While we were working on 'Secrets of my Confederate Soldier', once again, I smelled cigar smoke in my bathroom. Once we had it republished, no more cigar smoke.

I'm sharing this because after this experience I was afraid to write about New Orleans. Part of the New Orleans' culture is voodoo. If I had Bradley's cigar smoke, what would I have with voodoo? Yes, I'm a chicken.

This story has been on hold for close to ten years. I finally decided to try it.

Back to writing the new story. I made it to four chapters, and I was proud they turned out well. When I attempted to click on the story to continue it, I was told 'the file was corrupted'. None of the other stories on this thumb stick had been corrupted. Only that story. I researched and tried for two days to recover that story. Nope. Wasn't going to happen.

I'm now writing a very sweet story about a small midwestern town in Illinois, and my heroine is a librarian who rescued a newborn puppy whose mother died. Not a crime family or voodoo anywhere around. Just a sweet romance.

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Suspension of disbelief refers to the willingness to accept something as true or real, even if it is improbable or fantastical, in order to enjoy a work of fiction. It involves avoiding critical thinking and logic to fully engage with the narrative.
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