When I wrote the first drafts of All That’s Missing, I knew the emotional journey my protagonist needed to take.  I knew he would start with the threatened loss of family and home and, after a metaphorical, as well as physical journey,  end up in a new place with the beginnings of a new family.  What I did not know were the day-to-day ins and outs of the story, the step by step process that would take Arlo from page 1 to The End. 
            I needed to discover what would happen once he reached his destination and met his grandmother.  How would their relationship develop?  How would she feel about him?  Why didn’t he know her? These were all questions I needed to answer in order to write the book.  Maybe needing to know those answers is what drove me to write the book.              When I had written (and revised and revised and revised), I shared the manuscript with trusted first readers.  Here is what one of them said:
            “As usual, the text reads like a dream.  You’ve got just the right touch with your prose.  It’s really, really good.  Here’s what I think, however …once Arlo meets up with [Ida Jones], everything is too easy.  It’s fine to have a respite in there, when life seems wonderful to Arlo, but on the edge of that respite, there should be some tension.”
            Deep in my gut, I knew this.  The trouble was, I had worked so hard in getting Arlo to Edgewater to find his grandmother, I didn’t have the heart to throw additional complications in his path.  He and I had suffered enough, hadn’t we?  I wanted the rest of his journey to be easy.  But, who did I want it to be easy for?  Arlo?  Or myself?  Those trusted first readers gave me the answer.  I needed to steel myself and write the hard parts.  Arlo hadn’t earned his place in a new home yet and it was my job to make that happen.                        I needed to go deeper into my imagined small town in Tidewater, VA, so I made a trip to the town which had inspired the idea, the town where my grandparents lived when I was a child.  My fictional town of Edgewater is NOT Tappahannock.  But, there are similarities. I took photographs.  I parked my car and walked to the beach.  I inhaled the air.  I took note of small neighborhoods.  I thought about the light and the trees and the osprey nests.  I imagined my own version of the main street of town and began filling in the businesses I thought would be there.  I drew maps.
            When I came home, I let my imagination roam.  I thought about what an 11, almost 12 year old boy would do if he were suddenly living in a strange town with a prickly grandmother.  Where would she take him?  What would they do?  The town where I lived at the time, Charleston, WV is in many ways, a small town.  At least, it has that feel.   There are two gathering spots on the main street, Ellen’s Ice Cream and Taylor Books, the indie bookstore/art gallery/coffee shop which is the default meeting place for just about everything.  I decided my fictional town needed a place like that, so I created a bookstore.  And, as is true of the real Taylor Books, I made the owners of the business live in an apartment over the shop.
            And then the magic started to happen.  Edgewater came alive in my head.  I “discovered” that Arlo was going to make a new friend in Edgewater.  She would be the daughter of the couple who ran the bookstore.  Her name was Maywood.  This discovery led to others.  I was off and running.  I had characters I felt belonged in the place.  Now I needed tension.  Since the novel is about finding your place in the world, what if, just at the moment, Arlo finally meets his grandmother, she is about to lose her home?  What if, just when he thinks he has found a new place, that place is threatened? Then it would be up to Arlo to help her save her home. 
            The story was evolving in an organic way.  That’s the trick with revision.  If you impose a plot on characters without allowing it to evolve, it will feel unnatural and manipulative.  In short, it won’t work.
            But, now I had characters and setting and tension and plot.   The work became fun.  I had to let my characters walk through more darkness.  I didn’t want to do that, but the story demanded it.
            And, as I understood the characters on a deeper level, as I came to love them in all their brokenness, I could allow them to be imperfect.  I went from having a bland grandmother who asked no questions when her long-lost grandson showed up out of the blue, to having to a prickly lady who is suspicious of his motives and questions everything he tells her. In short, I had my story.
            And now I have embarked on another story.  I’ve written the first draft.  I’m working on the second.  The characters are evolving.  I am coming to know and love them.  I am finding my way.
[Excerpt from talk given at SCBWI MD/DE/WV Fall Conference 2014]