An Aha moment

I had my writer's group last night, and I ended up getting the most out of it on the drive home. I dropped one of the members at her house, and during the ride, I mentioned how I was having a hard time with the story I am revising. I decided it was because many of my stories are about the same thing--loss of a loved one-- and I was finding it hard to really to distinguish this character from my others.

My writing group partner mentioned how in lots of author interviews, writers talk about how they often get obsessed with one topic and write about it from a million different angles to try to get a grasp on it. And she noted that loss of a loved one is a big enough topic that she could see how I could do that.

Something about her saying that made me think about the many people a person grieves
throughout a lifetime. And that made me realize why I was feeling stuck--two of my characters are 30-something women grieving after the unexpected death of a husband. Why do they both need to be grieving husbands? There are so many other types of people whose death would really impact a person. So now I am thinking that the character in Sit, Stay is grieving after the death of her father, to whom she was really close.

I feel unstuck! And excited to get back to my revision this weekend.