Writing is like painting

As I was contemplating the daunting changes that I still need to make to my first book, I decided that writing is a lot like painting. Having no personal experience with much painting, I called my dad who is an accomplished artist. I wanted to make sure that my limited knowledge was at least correct. Okay, so here is the picture that popped into my head...

When an artist starts to paint on a canvas, the first thing he does is prep the canvas. That can be as simple as painting the entire surface white. I think that my first draft was that white layer. I know, kind of depressing to think of  nine months of writing as a plain white background, but you didn't read my first draft did you? Trust me, it was the bare bones of the story without all of the color that makes a story great.

I have since rewritten my book three times and each time it gets more colorful. Like adding the layers of paint to make a landscape really pop. I do hope that as I continue to write, my first drafts will begin to have a little more color to them so that I won't have quite so many re-writes. Adding color takes time, and work. But it sure is fun to try and put words on paper (or screen) that paint the vivid pictures that live inside my head.

Here are the paintings that two of my kids painted in a mere three hour class.

Beautiful! Right?

Painted by Cora 12 years old

Painted by Caedmon 9 years old