What you feel is relatively simple until it becomes anything but. For the most part, emotions are well-defined, but when it comes to the complicated blend of them, how someone feels or reacts is the backbone of a story…

I often wonder what inspires people. I tell myself that my mind presents this question to me from time to time so that I can understand different ways to motivate the characters I write about, but when I put this into practice, it does not end up happening the way I plan it. Instead, I find myself reaching for the things that inspired me to write in the first place.

I find myself talking about my work-in-progress novel a lot more than I am accustomed to. While having conversations about my story, I try not to give too many details, but in doing so I have found myself falling in the habit of using tropes or comparisons from modern storytelling that do not entirely represent what I am writing.