Moving Forward and Making Progress

After last week’s post, I felt pretty bummed out about how my writing has been going. I know that things have been really busy in my life lately, but when it comes to my writing, I felt like I was letting myself down.

When I was planning out what the subject of this week’s blog was going to be, it started to sound like more whining about how much time I don’t have to write. Obviously, this issue has been weighing on my mind a lot. Then I read the comments of another blogger who was having the same type of problem as me. Seeing that I wasn’t the only one, I decided to accept the issue I’m having with making time to write and just start making time to write.

I stopped, took a deep breath and thought about finding a small project I could start working on to get my brain back in the writing groove. I looked at the yet to be posted blogs for The Secret Pond and wondered what direction I could take it.

Over the weekend I read a post by a WordPress blogger that I follow, BeetleyPete. The post is called Archival neglect. It is about how we bloggers don’t seem to do much with our archived works. So, he decided to dust off some of his favorites, create links in his post and showcase them for his newer followers to see. Many of you weren’t following my blog when The Secret Pond was originally posted on BlogSpot. Only the prologue and first two chapters were posted previously. So, maybe I’ll rework these posts a little bit and repost them for you.

When I started this last year, it was hard to write the story in pieces on a weekly basis. As I reread through it yesterday,  I can see that it didn’t get the time and attention that it really needed trying to do it that way. I’ve learned a lot more about my craft since then, and I know that I can make it better.

So, here is the revised version of the Prologue of The Secret Pond. Originally published June 8, 2015.

The Secret Pond is inspired by the A to Z blogging challenge in May 2015 and the Morning Walk blog entry from June 9, 2015. This is the first installment.

Prologue

Abigail Watson lived in the carriage house at the Baxter’s country estate just outside of Superior, Wisconsin. She not only tutored Sally Baxter in her studies, she also helped Sally’s mom, Jean, with planning for the many events she hosted at their house. From teas, to lunches, and dinner parties, the house was always seemed to be a bustle of activity.

Sally’s parents were able to give her anything she wanted. But all she really wanted was a friend. Abigail was nice, but she seemed to be there more for her Mom than for her. Sally would ask Abigail to come and explore the grounds with her. She would always say she had too much to do. Just like her parents would say when she asked them.

Their school day was from 8:00 AM to noon Monday through Friday. They covered four subjects, English, History, Science and Math. English was fun and her favorite. Sally got to read stories and write about them. History was fun, she learned a lot about things that happened in our country. They were told through many stories written by the ones who experienced it. Science was o.k. She loved the earth science part and when they went outside to find insects and animals, but didn’t like having to learn about continental plates, weather patterns and theories. Math was the worst. Abigail just started teaching Sally about multiplication and division. Memorizing those math tables was just not working for her.

She seemed to get the best inspiration for her writing from the secret pond, probably because it got her away from the craziness of her house. The pond was located in the woods in the back part of their property. Sally loved to go there with her light green Dora the Explorer backpack, her stuffed bear, Clyde, her little yellow notebook and the pink Hello Kitty pen that actually wrote with pink ink. She loved to write stories about fairies and gardens.

The one thing that Abigail would do is let her read the stories she created in her favorite yellow notebook. Sally was so happy to have an audience for her stories. At the end of her school session, they would take time to let Sally read what she had written. As she shared her adventures with Abigail, Sally longed to have a friend just like Lila, the fairy who she wrote about in her stories.

Sally decided that she needed a companion. She was an only child living in a big house way out in the country, away from town. Her great-grandfather had done well in the shipping business. And the family continued to live in his house and off of the money made by his hard work. She was finding comfort in the imaginary friend she was creating through her writing. So, she changed Lila from a fairy in her stories into a girl, just like Triton did with Ariel in the movie The Little Mermaid.

They would go on adventures together in her stories and her imagination. One time Sally saw a movie with her Aunt Judy about a unicorn that lived in the woods that wound up saving the entire forest. Sally became inspired to write a story about how her and Lila met up with a unicorn.

She brought her books back to her bedroom after class. Looking out of her bedroom window, she saw the clouds building and the wind picking up. She grabbed her yellow rain slicker to keep warm and dry.

“Make sure you grab your yellow jacket, Lila,” Sally said, “we don’t want to get wet.”

And they headed out together to the pond.

This has been a lesson for me to make time for the things I want to do and not get so frustrated when I don’t. It is important to work towards the goals we set for ourselves and not let life get in the way as much as it does.

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