Writing Rest in Piece: The Jigsaw to Success

As many of you know, Rest in Piece is my first published book. I’ve written several other things before such as poems and other short stories, but never have I really gotten one published. Writing Rest in Piece took about a year and took a lot of work when it came to both the writing and editing process. Even after everything, the story’s still not perfect – no story is. However, I’m still very proud of it and the process in which I embarked upon to get it published!

The Idea Behind Rest in Piece:

The whole puzzle idea in Rest in Piece and really much of the idea behind the story in general came from the fact that my grandpa has always loved putting puzzles together. It was a hobby that when he was younger, he loved. He had this one puzzle upstairs that scared the crap out of me and when I slept over at my grandparents’, it freaked me out. I remember for the most part what the puzzle looked like and I decided to base my story after it. Unfortunately, the puzzle got thrown away or donated fairly recently so I don’t have it.

Writing the Story:

I wish I could explain how everything came together, but that’s not really easy to do. I just started thinking of the story and what I wanted to happen. However, I’ll try to explain some of the parts of writing the story.

• The Characters: Both girls in the story are young and yet, mature and intelligent. They are extremely brave and even though their lives take place during different time periods, they’re similar in many ways. The parents of the main character are very loving and while they respect their daughter’s age, they are very protective. The other family in Rest in Piece are in mourning and yet, they also, are incredibly strong individuals.
• Imagery: Imagery has always been kind of a struggle for me. I love reading books with tons of imagery, but writing it tends to be difficult. However, I think I did a fairly good job of describing several of the more horrific scenes in the book. I took my dad’s advice and tried to really picture the scenes as if I was living them. Also, I’m a big believer that TV shows and movies are great for giving us an idea of how to include imagery in our writing.
• Themes: There are various themes in Rest in Piece. I didn’t necessarily go into writing the story thinking of including them, but they’re present. Themes such as: life, death, mourning, and even health are included in the story.
• The ending: While the very ending of the story came together quite easily for me, it was the part leading up to it that was a little tricky. Sometimes while you’re writing, you feel like you need something big to happen and instead, your mind just isn’t coming up with anything you deem creative enough. That’s when you really have to start thinking and stop being lazy about it. Soon enough, you’ll come up with an idea and everything will snap into place!

Editing:

Editing is a pain in the butt – plain and simple. Editing is important and necessary though and rushing through the process shouldn’t be an option. Take your time and also, I recommend asking someone else to help you edit as well. Sometimes it’s hard to be objective when you’ve written the story and when you’ve read it a million times.

Publishing:

I did a lot of research on publishing. I decided in the end that for me, it was best to self-publish. A lot of people are going that route these days and I felt that it was better to self-publish rather than send my story to a publisher that might take longer to get back to me, only to say that my story didn’t fit in with what they were looking for. With that being said, I chose the best self-publishing option I thought was out there!

Accepting That Your Story Will Never Be Perfect:

This is never easy to do, but it has to be done. Even after editing and trying your best, chances are that your story will still have flaws. I know as writers, it can drive us crazy, but we have to realize that we’re human and that every writer, even professionals, make mistakes. I’m not saying that this means that we shouldn’t try our hardest to avoid making these mistakes in the first place, but that we need to learn from them and then move on. We have to learn that even though we’re not perfect, we’re still amazing writers!

-B.W. Ginsburg

If you’d like to purchase my book, Rest in Piece, feel free to do so here! Thank you!