Its been too long since I’ve had time to just sit and relax for a full day. Happily, today was one of those days. I was able to spend the whole morning outside enjoying the sun, and the silence until the neighborhood woke up and got to work for the day. All I did for the longest time was just sit on my front step with my eyes closed and love where I was, taking the time to appreciate all of the things that I have, and all of the beautiful people in my life. As I sat there, my thoughts started to go deeper, and I started to tell myself a story and weaving random ideas together. Before I realized it, I was brainstorming a new idea for a story.

I’m so excited. I spent the rest of the morning getting as much of it as I could down on paper, and keeping it with me in my mind. I don’t want to let it go too long in case I forget something important, but I have a feeling that I’ve done well. Two pages of cramped and somewhat sequential notes about the main characters, and the main theme, and some minor characters as well. I need to figure out what the problem is for the story, but I have a needed ingredient for the plot, and a center stage for important character building moments.

I have a friend who passed away quite a few years ago now, and not so strangely she was very much with me this morning while I was in my land of discovery. It felt different then how she’s usually with me. Normally I feel her and only get a sense of weather or not she would think I’m on the right track with a particular character, but this time I feel like it was thinking of her this morning that lead me to the new story.

Religion has never been overly important to me, for the most part I can take it or leave it, although I’m glad that others are able to find peace in it. I’ve always been more prone to believing in the natural order, that some things just happen, and that you need to be a good person if you expect good things to happen to you in return, as well as the more traditional views about hard work paying off. Nothing too wishy washy. When my friend passed, I never quite thought of her as gone. It was a tragic accident that took her life, and it took everyone that knew her by surprise, but no matter how sad I was, I’ve always felt that she was with me.

It’s been a private comfort since she passed. I don’t really talk about her much, but I think about her often. I suspect that I’m not the only one, she was so full of life while she was alive, she had so much to give.

As I wrote down my planning today, I thought of her, and I let my memories of her guide me while designing my new characters. I do that a lot. Mostly for the females I write. Before she and I met, I used to write very docile and meek girls who needed a man to save them. I had a very romanticized view on how girls fell in love and went through life. She got mad at me one day and made me see how wrong this was, that girls could be strong and knights too. They didn’t NEED to have someone save them all the time, that they could be strong and independent and still be beautiful and loved.

It was a hard niche to get out of, but one that I’m glad I left behind. I have a very strong female presents in my own life, one who has never been afraid to stand up for herself, and I never took the time to realize it until my friend opened my eyes. It was in that moment that I think I really began to find my own voice.

So strong female characters, but they’ll need to be in order to get through what trials await them. We’ll all need to be strong.