Kimberly Gardner

Speaking as a writer, I’m in a very exciting place right now. In fact, it’s one of my very favorite places in the entire writing universe.

I’m at the beginning of a new project.

What, you might ask, is so thrilling about the start of a new project? If you aren’t a writer yourself you might ask this. If you are a writer then you probably already know.

It’s the thrill of possibilities without limit. The discovery of who my new characters are. What their lives are like. How they’ll meet or get back together if they already know each other. How they’ll react to the other during that all important first encounter. How they’ll fall in love and whether they’ll fight it.

Then later on in the story: What will come between them, forcing them apart until it seems they can’t possibly find their HEA?

And finally: How will they find their HEA? Or, and this is probably more accurate, how will I find their HEA for them?

Whenever I finish a manuscript I get the blues. Leaving that couple, even with the knowledge that I’ve given them their own HEA, is always something of a melancholy experience, like saying good-bye to good friends. After all, I’ve spent countless hours with these characters. I’ve seen them through some pretty tough times, watched them fall in love, sweated over the obstacles to that love and sighed with satisfaction when at last they find happiness.

But having said all that, I still love that moment when all the world is filled with possibilities for my new characters. Oh sure, I know the road to a completed story is always bumpy and that in a month or two I’ll be cursing these same characters and wishing they’d just leave me be.

But for right now, all the world is my canvas. And that’s the greatest feeling of all.