Middle Grade Musings

Last night after a full week of writing, I just felt like relaxing and having fun. Of course, since writing is my favorite hobby, I reached for one of my writing projects--a historical fiction middle grade novel I'm just starting to write. I grabbed my book of baby names along with several nonfiction books from the American Revolution era and had fun looking through them to come up with names for my new characters. Hip, hip hooray! I chose the name of my main character--a 12-year-old girl. Then I started filling out a character interview from a form distributed at my writer's group. Some of the things I discovered about my character surprised me as I had to fill in the blanks about who her parents were and what her favorite color was, etc. I recently read of an author who creates a scrapbook for the characters in her novels, collecting photos of the actual setting and magazine pictures of what she thinks her characters look like, etc. This intrigues me and I want to start a scrap book for all the new characters I'm going to meet in my new book, too! After deciding on all the names I needed in order to start my book, I sat down with my laptop and finished typing my first chapter. Whew. A big milestone! Now I'm ready to move forward and let the story unfold.