Follow the Leader?

This is not a post about dancing. It’s about following the character in a story as the story develops. I know I’m the writer so I’m really the leader but right now I’m following the lead of the protagonist as she starts the story and sets up the situation from her point-of-view.             I guess I should backtrack a bit. A writer friend asked me about my process; and I honestly didn’t know what to say to her.  For weeks I’ve been playing with a complicated and serious idea for what I thought might be a novel (but could also
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What will Stick?

So many things have changed since March of 2020. This pandemic adventure has brought a new awareness of how local, national, and international events are all tied together. Everything is personal and everyone is connected—whether we like it or not. Apparently, some people don’t like it at all. They prioritize the personal over community as a default. In the realm of public health this especially difficult.             I’m not going to start a rant here. Rants are so commonplace right now. I’d like to shift to something forward-looking. Let’s see what will stick around when the world is closer to
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What will Stick?

So many things have changed since March of 2020. This pandemic adventure has brought a new awareness of how local, national, and international events are all tied together. Everything is personal and everyone is connected—whether we like it or not. Apparently, some people don’t like it at all. They prioritize the personal over community as a default. In the realm of public health this especially difficult.             I’m not going to start a rant here. Rants are so commonplace right now. I’d like to shift to something forward-looking. Let’s see what will stick around when the world is closer to
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Is There Something WRONG?

Sunday is the Super Bowl and Monday is Valentine’s Day. Alas… no romance for me—at the moment. And I have never been a football fan. No interest in chicken wings & chips when I went food shopping. And I don’t need a holiday to remind me to indulge in chocolate. I usually have a little chocolate every day. But I wonder if there is there something wrong with my internal calendar? I never enjoy the hype about the big game, the “clever” commercials that debut during it, the halftime show, and all the hoopla that goes with it. And this
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The STAR of the Show?

Are we all, as the cliché goes, the star of our own show? In a sense yes. I think we’re at least a major player—the active protagonist or the observant narrator. Some people have more exciting stories (lives) in the sense that they are celebrities, leaders, notable figures in their fields, or notorious for something terrible—like a crime or a scandal. No one wants to be a bit player in the story of their own life, so we’re all stars.             I remember conversations many years ago about reincarnation. Everyone thought their past lives were stellar. If you imagined your
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