Welcome to my Unfolding Revolution

Starting this month, in addition to the usual ExcitingWriting topics, I'll take you along with me as I write my second novel, Revolution. Each month, I'll tell you the progress I've made and point out relevant writing principles.

Before we get to that, let's cover a topic that befuddles many: If someone asks after your health and you are okay, do you say, good, fine or well?

Good is an adjective. It could relate to one's behavior in relation to an ethical norm or to the degree of skill one has.

Well is an adverb. It describes how one feels and is the word one usually uses to communicate that one is in good health.

Fine is an adjective that means of superior quality, admirable, consisting of small particles, refined and delicately fashioned. It has other uses, as well. For example, a fine musician is one of excellent quality. That is where it approaches one use of the word good; however, a fine musician is clearly better than a good musician.

So, when someone asks you how are you, how do you answer? If you are feeling chipper, the standard answer is ''I'm fine,'' picking up on the superior quality meaning of that word. However, if you want to emphasize that you are in good health, you could say, ''I'm well.'' The answer ''I'm good,'' is not really appropriate. However if you are a baby sitter you could tell the parents when they return home that their children were good to indicate they were well behaved.

My novel, Revolution.

Revolution will be a work of fiction, but the story was prompted by events I experienced while serving in the Peace Corps on the northern coast of Colombia directly after I graduated from college in 1967.

Here is the story I wish to tell: In 1967, a Peace Corps volunteer in Colombia, S.A. meets and becomes friendly with a FARC revolutionary soldier, and what happens next. (Trust me: I'm not giving the story away. I would not be that cruel.)

Che Guevara was killed in the mountains of Bolivia with the help of the CIA about a month after I arrived in my little village of Manaure. In the summer of 1967 many revolutions were in process around the globe. Parts of major U.S. cities went up in flames.

I'm using revolution as a metaphor for human transformation. At its heart, my novel will be a love story.

Here's an important point: In business writing, as in fiction writing, the whole point of the effort is the solving or the working out of a problem. A novel can work out a character's problem as much as issuing a press release can solve a business communication problem.

In Revolution, my Peace Corps volunteer and principal character, Jake Lancer, has a problem: How to stay in the Peace Corps for the next two years so he won't be drafted and sent to fight in Viet Nam. As he is exposed to the on-going revolution in Colombia and struggles with his own conflicting desires, he increasingly experiences his personal Viet Nam where he is in Colombia.

I will tell you more about my novel next month, and share with you the process I went through in getting it to its current state of development.

No one can say whether Revolution will ever be published, and, if it is, whether it will shoot to the top of the best-seller charts or molder on the remainder tables. That's the fun of embarking on this journey and taking my 2000+ ExcitingWriting Advisory readers along with me. One thing I know for sure: If Revolution is successful, you will be able to say, ''I remember when Chuck was writing it.'' See you next month.