It’s been a while since I shook things up a bit so I decided to change the title of the blog … I liked “A Smidgeon’s Toll” okay as a blog title but it never seemed to catch hold. So for the new year, I guess I’ll try a new one on for size. Scratching The Surface. It more fits what I’m doing with my blog, and with my writing.
This reflects back to a pivotal scene in my first novel:
“… he had what I call ‘the fever’… it gets in yer blood and you can’t do nothing about it once you got that.”
“The fever?” Sam was amazed that Loot had used the same term he sometimes used himself.
“Yeah. Gold fever,” Loot said. “Or could be silver fever or hell, I guess diamond fever. It’s whatever gets under your skin and makes you scratch the ground looking to git rich. I reckon it musta been eatin’ away at old Slim all them years even after he couldn’t do nothing about it.”
Loot leaned forward and stared Sam right in the eye. “You got it too, aintcha?”
I always liked that scene … it clarifies the title and begins to show how serious these characters are about the personality flaw they both have that is at the core of the story.
Writing is not unlike the struggle of the character in The Fever. It also gets under one’s skin … tapping the keyboard is akin to scratching the ground. And now I’ve barely scratched the surface.
What gets under YOUR skin making you willing to “scratch the ground”?
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Thomas Fenske is a writer living in NC. http://thefensk.com
Scratching the Surface 