Born To Write

Pip: Born To Write — where the blog is the warm-up lap and the novel is the finish line nobody can quite see yet.

Mara: That's the territory Chris Chonos is covering lately — the mechanics of building a writing practice, the standalone fiction scenes that practice produces, and the personal reflections that sit underneath all of it. Let's start with the writing practice itself.

Writing Practice And Story Drafts

Pip: The question here is straightforward but not simple: how do you actually build a novel when life keeps shrinking the available hours?

Mara: The answer, at least in Keep Writing, is free writing in fast bursts — and the journal entry there introduces young Silas: "He was a wonderer not only in his mind but in his body. He was never going to stand still."

Pip: So Silas isn't a character so much as a force of nature in short pants — which is a useful thing to have at the center of a historical adventure.

Mara: Wednesday Writing Thoughts puts a number on the progress: 850 words into the book draft, with research into Canadian orphanages underway. And the earlier Free Writing post shows Silas grown, signing on to a westward railway crew with exactly that same restlessness. So The Story Begins notes the novel is anchored in a real event — the shape is coming together.

Pip: Research is sometimes the best part of writing, apparently. Onto the fiction itself.

Free-Written Fiction Scenes

Pip: These standalone scenes are where the daily practice goes somewhere unexpected — short fiction that isn't Silas, isn't the book, just the imagination running loose.

Mara: Free Write-One Last Meal is the clearest example. Michelle wakes in an abandoned house, finds a warm bowl of soup, and her mother appears — then says, "I wanted to make you one last meal before…" and she hesitates.

Pip: The ellipsis is doing a lot of heavy lifting there, and it earns every bit of it.

Mara: The scene ends with Michelle recognizing herself in a casket and following her mother toward a light in the kitchen. Free Writing-Last Call runs a similar emotional current — a man arrives at his girlfriend's empty apartment and learns, through her mother's sobs, that Linda was killed by a drunk driver the night before. Both pieces land their gut-punch in the final lines.

Pip: From ghost stories to personal history — the reflective posts pull in a different direction.

Life Choices And Personal Reflections

Pip: Several posts here ask the kind of questions that sound simple until you actually try to answer them — and the answers turn out to be quietly revealing.

Mara: Kindest Thing is the anchor. Early in a career maintaining aircraft, struggling and close to quitting, two colleagues stepped in. The post puts it plainly: "This kindness helped me to have a long career fixing airplanes for 25 years. I can never thank these two men enough, and know that I would have given up."

Pip: Twenty-five years hinging on two people deciding not to look the other way. That's the kind of debt that doesn't have a repayment schedule.

Mara: The other reflections are lighter but consistent in what they reveal. Job says that if salary were no object, the answer would be writing — something actually enjoyed. Hobby admits watercolor painting didn't stick, though the paints are still around. Best Thing recalls finding a hundred-dollar bill in a mall parking lot, turning it in, and being told to keep it.

Pip: Honest enough to turn it in, lucky enough to get it back. That's a good day.

Mara: Something Different lands on research as the sharpest contrast with the past — hours in libraries chasing books already checked out, versus finding the same information in twenty or thirty minutes now. And Favorite Apps maps the daily toolkit: banking, investments, Safari for research, Jetpack for blogging, and the News app on top for puzzles and keeping up with the world.

Pip: The apps list is basically a portrait of someone trying to stay organized, curious, and solvent all at once — which, honestly, describes the whole blog.

Mara: The through-line is someone building something — a novel, a practice, a record of how a life accumulates.

Pip: More Silas next time, presumably. The kid got on a boat at six. He's not stopping now.