The Art of Comfort

Even though 85k words are written, even though I’m sloshing hip-deep through final edits, I still worry (incessantly, obsessively, ridiculously) if I’ve chosen the right writing style for book #18.

Yeah, dumb. I know.

Anyhow, here’s my latest method of getting through that. I call it the Pasta Method.

While the majority of my previous novels could be likened to light, fresh, chilled pasta salads chocked full of colorful cherry tomatoes, crisp greens, crunchy nuts and an airy lemon-kissed vinaigrette, The Hushing Days is not.

This does not make the book bad, it only makes it different. It addresses a different kind of hunger.

Sometimes we want a warm, comforting dish. We want beefy morsels stewed for hours on the stove. We want chunky vegetables muted by time and steady heat. We need dark, rich tomatoes steeped in red wine… This is The Hushing Days.

Or so I hope.

A silly thought, I know, but one that brings my roiling stomach a bit of comfort.

Until tomorrow…

Chloe

The Lonely Years

Every blog this old in the tooth (we’re on our 3^rd year now of daily posts) should really have a mission statement. Some kind of brief synopsis explaining to the uninitiated why the blogger does blog so devotedly. Nothing fancy, mind you. Just something concise and straight to the point. (No rolling your eyes at that. I can do concise. I can.)

So, as Year Three begins on The Words and Madness here is my mission statement. Fair warning: it may surprise some of you.

Mental illness can be an excruciatingly lonely disease. Most suffer it in silence. The stigma attached to confessing such an illness often seems too damning to bear…

So, this blog hopes to offer company to those quiet ones. A daily, often kooky reminder that there are others flapping about in the crazy waters with you. There is an author by your side, one who finds comfort in babbling about her writing career (the only true normalcy she can find in this life).

Company is this blog’s priority. 

Comfort with the occasional surprised smile is this blog’s hope.

Until tomorrow…

Chloe

Post Note: I feel completely too full of myself right now. Delusions of grandeur, anyone? 

When Simplicity Calls, Answer

Flannel slippers on an icy January morn.

A white cotton nightie on a sweltering August eve.

A sun-baked towel after a cool dip in the pool.

In other words… sweet Willoughby.

I’d truly forgotten how much I enjoy writing the character of Willoughby Fawkes. A minor major player (yes, there can be such a thing) in The Hushing Days, it has been a while since I slipped into the young woman’s skin.

I’ve missed her.

Yesterday, Chapter Two came into my editing sights, and in it I found the dear miss tapping her foot impatiently for her due attention. With all the attention my more “complicated” characters have required of me in Edits, I realized that I had been neglecting the “simple” girl who only wants someone to love.

Remember: there is never harm in crawling into simplicity.

Seek it out from time to time and smile.

Until tomorrow…

Chloe