Grimm!

My husband is not a very imaginative fellow on the whole. Very smart. Very logical. Everything should make sense on some level. And yet, when he does exhibit those sparks of imagination, he can be very imaginative. Creative even.  Me? I have a very vivid imagination. I like ghost stories and things that stretch belief, things he often makes fun of me for. Can I just tell you how surprised I was when he told me that Grimm is one of his new favorite television shows?

And speaking of Grimm. Have you ever read Grimm's fairy tales? Many of them are the basis for old familiar stories we've all grown up with, but like many of those familiar stories, the original stories are much darker than the stories we know. This is where the TV show goes. Grimm's fairy tales are often bloody and frightening. But let's focus on the light-hearted, frivolous ones.

I mentioned a few weeks back that I'd pulled out my copy of said book. I was looking up the story of the Shoemaker and the Elves, which is actually a very short story and titled simply "The Elves." It is included in another group of similar stories which feature the little guys, and it plays a role in my latest flight of imagination. Yes, while I wait to send off Mist on the Meadow to my editor, I've discovered that even though I'm still fatigued with the efforts of editing and creating, there is no stopping my imagination.

Authors often go through bouts of self-doubt and are easily able to convince themselves that they have no talent and they are wasting their time, Yours Truly included. And yet, there's this bug inside that refuses to be ignored. So maybe my writing sucks. Maybe I'm stretching beyond my limits. (Making a point here, and let me thank those of you who have been so very complimentary and would contradict me.) That bug inside sees the world through a different filter (as has also been addressed in previous ramblings on this very blog). Something triggers my imagination and a story insists on playing in my head.

It's the dawn of a new day, and tired, fatigued, full of angst about my abilities to create a story, I can't resist the allure of a bright, shiny new idea. Like the sunrise this morning, there are clouds to  battle, but there's no denying the sunshine that always wins out.

And so begins the new book.