It started out as a single character. A character with a funny name. The name wasn't suppose to be serious although it belonged to a character who was. It was suppose to be a contradiction of sorts, but as time progressed, her name changed to Rose Abigail Ningolsham.

Her.  Finally found someone who fit what I envisioned in my mind. The eyebrows and the cheeks fit perfectly. This makes my heart happy. People on DevianArt are awesomely talented.

I started wondering what exactly made her as serious and bitter as she was. That single question led me down an endless trail which I still haven't found the end of seven years later. I think I wasn't old enough to write the story yet, but I couldn't just let it go, even though I didn't have any idea where to start or what was the most important part of it.

At first I thought it had to be a three book series, beginning when the lead character was twelve and ending when she was thirty. I set the story in this world and spent hours and hours on researching different things, especially since I had her nationality German (I know the last name contradicts it, but that is a long, long story). Then I threw the whole 'present time, present world' thing out the window. I'm still working on how to fix a story world for it since I'm used to making Fantasy story worlds, and this really doesn't go under one. It's just normal...but not normal.

So, I wrote the first two books in the series. It came out to be 180,000 words or so and was mostly backboneless scenes. That almost made me throw the entire thing out, but the character wouldn't leave me alone. I wanted - I needed to give this character a happy ending, some way or another which meant all along I should've just written the third book in the series. As all stories work for me, a seat-of-the-pants writer, it did not go the way I planned. I had one idea, but it changed drastically by the time I finished the first draft, giving me plenty of ideas for a second draft.

I changed my ways on the third draft. I've been following the Go Teen Writers' Blog for years now, and they posted a scene list for the 3-Act structure. I used that as a guideline and figured out what scenes stayed from the second draft and which weren't necessary. Then I figured out which scenes on the list I still needed. I wrote them all out on little cards and divided them into chapters. That really went against every fibre in my being, but it somehow worked. I finished the third draft, and now I'm rereading the third draft and making notes for fourth draft edits. I never imagined I'd get this far. At all, but I feel like there's actually hope.

Now I'm wondering how many stories I can think about at once. I have two others that are hanging around in the back of my mind. Both Fantasy and very unlike this one. One (The Rain Cloud Forest) is in the first draft stage, and the other (The Girl by the Lake) is waiting for second draft outlining.

This is one of the other main characters in the Rose Ningolsham story. Pictures and soundtracks give me hope when all else fails.