Laura Gilfillan's Blog

I'd like to share a poem I wrote recently:


The children are noisy,
the husband complained
Yes they are,
the wife agreed with a smile

In time the children grew and went their way

Our home is quiet and peaceful,
the husband said
Yes it is,
the wife agreed with a tear


Laura Gilfillan
January 2020

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Here’s an interesting question: If you could travel to any fictional world, where would you go, and what would you do there? I think I’d like to go visit...

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As a writer I’m sometimes asked where I get my ideas from. That’s a difficult question to answer, and I haven’t really come up with a good response yet. It seems ideas just sort of pop into my head. I have no idea how I would get them if they didn’t.I suppose story ideas are mostly a reflection of the things we think or dream about, the things we wonder about, the hopes and fears that we have, our experiences. Then we make stories that are sort of a culmination of those things.My idea for Marinian Pearls came mostly from wondering about what it would really be like to live in the sea. How cool would it be if I could swim around down there, exploring the mysterious depths. What would I find? What kind of dangers might there be?I wasn’t interested in the kind of mermaid story that would have some kind of fantasy underwater kingdom; I wanted to explore what the real ocean world is like. Writing this story was a lot of fun, especially doing all the research. I read all the books I could find about the ocean, and watched all the videos, too. I tried to keep the scenes in Marinian Pearls as authentic as I could, while adding whatever fictional twists I needed to add adventure and to make up for all that is still unknown about the ocean.But I’m not as sure of where I got my idea for Out of the Bottle, the novel I’m currently working on. This story is about a genie who wants to be free. She’s forced to serve whoever owns her bottle and has to grant their wishes. Wherever the idea came from, I am having a fun time with it. I’ve gone with my genie all over the world, and have gotten to learn a lot about other cultures. We’ve also met all kinds of character types, and those were a lot of fun to write up too.So. Where do ideas come from? I’m still not sure I can give a good answer to that. But wherever they come from, they’re just the start. The igniting little spark. Then comes the hard work of figuring out the story, doing the research, and getting all those words down on the page. And then re-writing the whole thing, editing, re-thinking…Coming up with the idea is the easy part.

It has been quite a summer, and now we’re well into fall, and here I am, finally ready to start posting again. The big event was our move to North Carolina which went well, but it was strenuous and full of letting go, as we did a major downsize. And there was sadness too as we had to say goodbye to our darling dog, Shiba, who made her own move to the ever-after, and could not come with us. Now that we’re here, we’ve been busy adjusting as we make the shift from being Northerners to learning how to be Southerners. We are really happy to be here in North Carolina. The people are friendly, the weather is sweet, and there are so many trees! We are still enjoying a colorful fall here, even though Wisconsin has already started the winter thing. The best news though is that I’ve still been able to keep on writing all through it all. I’m now well into the second draft of my current project—Out of the Bottle, a story about a genie who wants to be free. I hope everyone else has had an exciting summer too.

Being a Pisces myself, I especially appreciate this drawing with pencil and colored pencil my daughter Amanda recently did.

Some views from the last big snowstorm

One surprising thing about writing a story, which I’ve heard other writers talk about too, is the way some characters insist on having their own personality. I encountered this with Haley, the main character of Marinian Pearls. I had a certain concept of what kind of person she would be and really tried to stick with that idea. As a result, I had to re-write the entire 95,000 word novel several times until I finally gave up on what I thought she should be, and let her be the character she needed to be for the story. Only then did the story finally come together.

Which meant that she just wasn’t as nice as I was comfortable with. She was a really hard character for me to write, actually. I kept wanting her to say something reassuring to the people around her, or be more considerate, but that just wasn’t who she was. Instead she was a strong, resilient character who was entirely focused on her own goals. As Bill, another character from Marinian Pearls, said of her, “She would be his as much as the beauty of the sea was his, or the wind, the waves, the tide could ever be his. His to love. His to cherish. But never his to control.”

Talking about Bill, he was another unruly character. I never intended for him to be a primary character. He was just supposed to be one of her friends. But as it turned out, he loved her, and he would not go away. Neither would he do anything but think about her. So he ended up being an integral part of the story.

Some people have told me Haley is one of their favorite characters. But I know that some people have reacted more negatively to her. Especially one reviewer who said that Marinian Pearls was a unique and exciting read and that they liked it, but that Haley was the worst lead ever. They thought Haley was “self-righteous, stuck up, and selfish.” They then went on to specify in detail everything they hated about Haley. I was surprised by how passionate they got about this character from my book. I also felt a bit defensive. Like, I can’t help what kind of character Haley was. What do you think, that I’m in control? Just because I’m the writer?

My husband, the sweetie, got upset by that review. He didn’t think it had been fair to Haley. But you know, I can kind of see the reviewer’s point of view. It is quite true that Haley had her problems. But then, that’s kind of what made the story.

View more on Laura Gilfillan's website

One surprising thing about writing a story, which I’ve heard other writers talk about too, is the way some characters insist on having their own personality. I encountered this with Haley, the main character of Marinian Pearls. I had a certain concept of what kind of person she would be and really tried to stick with that idea. As a result, I had to re-write the entire 95,000 word novel several times until I finally gave up on what I thought she should be, and let her be the character she needed to be for the story. Only then did the story finally come together.Which meant that she just wasn’t as nice as I was comfortable with. She was a really hard character for me to write, actually. I kept wanting her to say something reassuring to the people around her, or be more considerate, but that just wasn’t who she was. Instead she was a strong, resilient character who was entirely focused on her own goals. As Bill, another character from Marinian Pearls, said of her, “She would be his as much as the beauty of the sea was his, or the wind, the waves, the tide could ever be his. His to love. His to cherish. But never his to control.”Talking about Bill, he was another unruly character. I never intended for him to be a primary character. He was just supposed to be one of her friends. But as it turned out, he loved her, and he would not go away. Neither would he do anything but think about her. So he ended up being an integral part of the story.Some people have told me Haley is one of their favorite characters. But I know that some people have reacted more negatively to her. Especially one reviewer who said that Marinian Pearls was a unique and exciting read and that they liked it, but that Haley was the worst lead ever. They thought Haley was “self-righteous, stuck up, and selfish.” They then went on to specify in detail everything they hated about Haley. I was surprised by how passionate they got about this character from my book. I also felt a bit defensive. Like, I can’t help what kind of character Haley was. What do you think, that I’m in control? Just because I’m the writer?My husband, the sweetie, got upset by that review. He didn’t think it had been fair to Haley. But you know, I can kind of see the reviewer’s point of view. It is quite true that Haley had her problems. But then, that’s kind of what made the story.

Today I set fire to a house, left the family who lived there destitute, and then separated the boy from his mother. Now I’ve got to deal with the consequences.

How do you like your books?

I like a good clean ending. For me that final wrap up is what transforms a good story into an excellent story. What really makes me feel disgruntled is the sort of story that ends in a cliff hanger. That’s only a set up for the next story, and it makes me feel manipulated. Sometimes I just walk away. Or how about when you’re looking for the next good book to spend your time on, think you’ve found one that might be interesting, and then discover that it’s actually book 53 from the middle of a series? Or something like that. And then the library—if you get most of your reading material from the library, as I do—doesn’t have the whole series?

I like a book that I can pick up, enjoy, and then have a good closure at the end of it. Story finished. Actually, I like that even if the book does happen to be part of a series. Maybe there will be some threads still trailing in an alluring sort of way, that make me want to see what happens next, but at least that part of the story has reached a graceful conclusion. But what’s really nice, and doesn’t seem to be as common these days, is the book that can stand alone. For me there’s something really satisfying about a story that manages to be fully contained within the covers of a single book.

Not to say that there aren’t some stories that need more than a single book. There certainly are some really good series out there. Also, as a writer, I can definitely understand the temptation of writing a series. Once you have an audience hooked, it’s a great set up for selling several more books. Publishers really like series too, for the aforesaid reason. As a matter of fact, I think this preference on the part of the publishers has manipulated the market quite a lot.

It seems a shame that a writer should feel like they have to write a series so that they can break into publishing, when maybe they only have a one book story, and maybe they don’t like writing about the same thing over and over again. I guess I’d like to see less pressure to make everything into a series. It would be nice if the market could open up more for one-book stories; for those writers who like to write them, and for those readers who like to read them.

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