I love the excitement generated by beginning a new writing project. It is the act of being creative, the thought of bringing something new into the world. Pomerania is one of those stories that seems to want to write itself. I have finished the first chapter, which is weird because I do not write the first draft in any structured form usually, but it just seems to be a natural division of the work. I will not bother putting an actual break in the text, that will occur when I write the second draft and start doing the editing, but it is interesting that what I am writing seems to be constructing itself in a very natural fashion. It is also encouraging; I seem to be onto something here!

One of the most interesting things at this stage is the emergence of the characters. I had a working name for the protagonist but then a piece of dialogue between them and the first person that they meet developed into and engaging piece of banter and the actual name that I am going to use stuck them right there. I do not have to do too much work on the protagonist’s backstory as this book is going to be semi-autobiographical, only the environment in which events occur is going to be different. They are going to have the same disability as myself and they are going to find themselves in the same torturous situations that I have experienced. My aim is not to garner sympathy but to achieve an awareness of a condition that is both rare and poorly understood even in medical circles. Fortunately, as well as all the pain and problems that go with being a disabled person, there has been a lot of love and laughter in my life, and I intend to capture all of that as well!