Howdy from Northern, California! Dana Mentink, here, Love Inspired Suspense author. Spring is just beginning to sproing here in Northern, California. It's been a very dry winter and we are all glad to see signs of blooms and buds. Many changes have occured at Mentink Manor since I last blogged here. We now have an extremely naughty little terrier doxie mix charging around the place. Junie (also known as Juniper-Drop it -What-Is-That-In -Your -Mouth -Mentink) has added verve to our place, for sure. Who would think that a bearded, twelve pound stripling could teach me a thing or two about writing and life?
The first thing Junie taught me was that the view is always the same inside. Every morning she is on fire to go out into the world and sniff and wag at anything and everything. Rain, sleet, sun...the weather doesn’t matter. Her mantra is .... "Let's go OOOUUUUUTTTTTT. We're too young to sit in a chair all day." Good advice, Junie. Let's take a break here in Chapter Three and go out for a walk. Those poor characters we dropped into that flooded mine shaft can just tread water for a while until we return.
Point number two, via Juniper Mentink. If a thing is worth something, you can come back to it later. That bone she hid under the sofa? It's gonna be even more amazing when she rediscovers it later this week. Writing is like that, too. It's better if you let it sit and revisit it after a while. Then you can dig deep, reexamine your work and create something savory indeed.
And the last point. No two dogs are the same. Oh how I still miss our previous dog, my darling old Nala, and for a while, I looked at Junie in astonishment, thinking, "Nala never did that!" So two creatures of the same species can be so different they are almost incomparable. And so too must my fictional characters be. That cowboy hero must be radically different than his counterpart in the previous book. That heroine, must be as unique and special as the person who reads all about her. Point taken, Junie! So thank you Junie and both of us wish you a wonderful spring and a great year of reading and writing ahead!
The first thing Junie taught me was that the view is always the same inside. Every morning she is on fire to go out into the world and sniff and wag at anything and everything. Rain, sleet, sun...the weather doesn’t matter. Her mantra is .... "Let's go OOOUUUUUTTTTTT. We're too young to sit in a chair all day." Good advice, Junie. Let's take a break here in Chapter Three and go out for a walk. Those poor characters we dropped into that flooded mine shaft can just tread water for a while until we return.
Point number two, via Juniper Mentink. If a thing is worth something, you can come back to it later. That bone she hid under the sofa? It's gonna be even more amazing when she rediscovers it later this week. Writing is like that, too. It's better if you let it sit and revisit it after a while. Then you can dig deep, reexamine your work and create something savory indeed.
And the last point. No two dogs are the same. Oh how I still miss our previous dog, my darling old Nala, and for a while, I looked at Junie in astonishment, thinking, "Nala never did that!" So two creatures of the same species can be so different they are almost incomparable. And so too must my fictional characters be. That cowboy hero must be radically different than his counterpart in the previous book. That heroine, must be as unique and special as the person who reads all about her. Point taken, Junie! So thank you Junie and both of us wish you a wonderful spring and a great year of reading and writing ahead!
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I love the lessons your pup taught you! Happy Spring to you as well!
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