God Makes All Things Beautiful In His Time

     It's that time of year again, no not Thanksgiving. It's NaNoWriMo time.(Okay have to admit that now the tune Howdy Dowdy Time is going thru my head). But now back to the blog subject. NaNoWriMo happens during the month of November and it's the insane attempt to write 50,000 words of a novel  in 30 days. They say a 50,000 word novel but the reality is that 50,000 words, in spite of being a herculean task, is not a novel. And writing that fast and furious means cutting and editing later. I'm picking up where Atrophy of the Heart left off. It left off with a question about a neighbor boy. I'm mixing fact with fiction once again to explore how one's faith can be nearly destroyed and built back up. I've got new friends supporting me along the way. On Facebook there's a page called Writing  Fun and Support and as far as I can tell we're all Christians which is helpful. We can encourage each other to continue to glorify God with our words. Maybe it's because I'm so far behind (I may not finish) but I posted the other day that "Writing words that count is more important than word counts."

      This time around, the subject matter is out of the realm of my firsthand knowledge. My main characters are Catholic. The mother and father are divorced. The mother has some issues with mental illness and the son turns to alcohol and drugs. It is his faith that is all but destroyed and built back up. And it is this man's testimony that I am basing the book on with his permission. He is a friend of mine that I haven't seen since childhood. There are some holes in the testimony I pulled off of his blog and that is where my fiction storytelling skills come in. And of course he just states the facts mixed with his philosophical musing so being that I'm writing a novel, I need to call upon those storytelling skills.

    Now you would think I need alot of research because there are so many areas in this story that I know nothing or very little about. I do need to do research but not now. To get those 50,000 words I have to write fast and furious what will essentially be an outline with corrections to be made later. I have done a little reading so hopefully no major changes will have to be made.

     It just dawned on me that it might be nice to have a time machine and go back to fix my friends life so I have no testimony of abuse and pain to base my story on. Did I learn nothing from Atrophy? The main character in that book learned the hard way that to change the facts is to change the very essence of the person. My friend is doing very good things with his life now and is happily married with 4 beautiful children.

     So no time machines in this story, just seeing how God makes all things beautiful in His time.