As others read the story, the general theme of the comments centered on this piece being part of a novel. This seemed to be a daunting task. I'm used to writing short stories and articles. Novels are much, much longer. Yet, even with other writing assignments to pursue, I kept coming back to Mary Elizabeth's life. Other characters, such as her brother-in-law, William, her brother, Edward, and his wife, Margaret, began to become real people. I thought maybe I could link the two stories into a short story and submit it somewhere. God had other plans, though.
In April, 2008 I attended a local Christian writers' conference. While there, two important things happened. One, I attended a workshop on novel writing taught by Alison Stobel. She discussed a way of creating a novel known as the "Snowflake Method". More on that in the next post. The second thing was I met Cathy Marie Hake, who writes historical romance novels. I showed her a copy of On the Bridge and asked her opinion of it. She said, "There's a novel here." That was enough motivation for me to explore writing a book.
Over the past two years I've learned that if God has a job for one of us to do, then He will make sure we find a way to accomplish the task. Also, His plans for us are often larger than the dreams we have for ourselves.
