Creativity

One of the most enjoyable aspects of this project has been the opportunity to be creative. Depending on one's job and/or hobbies creativity may well be a nearly forgotten word to someone in middle age. Writing a novel is creative, certainly, and the overall plan of the book is creative, but what has been most fun is having an idea right in the middle of a writing session and immediately putting it to use.

A recent example is that when Silas arrived in San Francisco he did so aboard a sailing ship that dropped anchor off the frantically growing city (the setting is 1849). How to get him off the ship?

There are reasons why he couldn't just walk off but still, as originally conceived, he was going to get himself ashore in a fairly straightforward way.

Then came an idea, then another idea of a complicating factor, then another of how to resolve it, and by the time Silas was on dry land and walking into the city a new minor character had been created - a character I hadn't planned on, one who hadn't existed an hour prior, and one who will go forward with the novel.

That was fun.