I have had this idea for a new novel brewing in my head since late December. It was inspired by the fog hugging the side of the West Virginia mountains near/at an exit for Cedar Grove. Over the next few road trips back and forth between NC/MI, the idea twisted, turned, bubbled, and fell together in place. I had my plot, how I wanted to create the mood of the novel, the characters, their backgrounds, and so on.

I just couldn’t get it started. Every sentence seemed forced. Every word seemed trite. Every thought so over done. For me, the first sentence for Chapter One had to make the reader go, DAMN.

When writing, writers are reminded to think of their audience, who they’re writing for, and to write what they know.

If I only wrote what I know, it’d be about music, hockey, wine and dirty martinis. I don’t have a problem with writing about any of that. I like writing about it. I have written and am writing about it in other “work(s) in progress” (WIP)…but I wanted to tackle something different.

I wanted to write about something else.

The Cedar Grove Project, as I’m calling it, has a potential to be great. When it came to me, I had a EUREKA moment. I think I even yelled it out into the night sky as the headlights of my car bounced down the road.

I thought of the audience I was writing for…and then I kicked them all out of my head.

I decided to write for me. This is the novel I want to read. This the novel I want to disappear and hide in. This is the novel, when read, makes me think about the world as I know.

The opening to the novel came to me as soon as I decided that…I should have always written that way and now, I am.