Thursday, September 17, 2015

In Process


In a time of a lot of uncertainty, waiting on all matters of things (both personal and professional) to right themselves, I'm feeling at peace inside my own stories. When the freelance work doesn't call, I find myself with pockets of time to lose myself in the real work (a shift in thinking from a time when I thought only the paying work was the real work) of trying to tell a story.

I have to work hard at this. Maybe I can kite-run off with a pretty sentence every now and then but, beyond that, I learn my limits every day. I have to fight to find a plot. I have characters that arc into broken rainbows, no pot of gold at their ends. I struggle to find rhythm. I forget the point I'm trying to make, if I ever had one to begin with.

But I'm learning, every day, to put my faith in the process and recognize that, for me, that process is going to be very messy and long. I used to think I was losing time. I used to think, without a book deal or an agent, I was lost in some writing blackhole, never to find my way out. But, a few weeks ago, I had a nice conversation with a writer who simply said in a voice so mild and zen I thought maybe I'd found God, "What's the rush? It'll happen someday."

What is the rush? I don't know.

So I sit somewhere between the possibility of someday and the reality of now.

The reality of now is, maybe, a little harsher than I'd like. But, in terms of writing, now is a process and 'someday' relies on it. I have wrestled with so many things inside stories, tried to bend characters and plots to my will, let them all go their very-wrong-ways and turned around again and again.

Maybe this is what I love about writing, the practice of it, the mess of it, being in a place where there are a million second chances, a million possibilities for a plot or a person or a relationship. Sara Zarr spoke in her This Creative Life podcast in an interview with John Corey Whaley about a tweet that made her recognize a possible reason she writes to begin with: it may be the only place she has any control at all.

I related to that.

This morning I decided to take two characters and make them one and I laughed, because I had to, because the only place it's possible for that to happen is while writing fiction, or maybe when a twin is absorbed in utero, I don't know (I'll leave that to the science fiction writers). Maybe it's a bad idea. Maybe it's a good one. It's a possibility, at least. And whether it's good or bad - I can live with the consequences. Either I move forward or I try again. While in process, there's always another way to go.

7 comments:

  1. Oh my friend. You express it all so elegantly. I have been there. And still find myself there as I struggle every day to make the words stick. To even find them in the first place. And now I horribly want to know who you combined? :) But I agree. There is no rush. (Something I keep having to re-learn). And enjoying the moment is a gift that is not always received.

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  2. P.S. I may or may not now be plotting a book where a twin is absorbed in utero . . . or maybe later . . . hmmm *brain churning*

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  3. I still believe it will happen someday (even though I'm a lot older than you). It will happen for both of us. Just keep writing.

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  4. Keep writing...and writing...you will grow as a writer, see things you missed before.

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  5. It is hard to wait and let things happen at their own pace, and when things are happening too slowly, I start to feel very anxious. Then, of course, if several things happen at the same time and suddenly I don't know how I'm going to do it all ... that makes me anxious, too. I finally had to face the fact that I wasn't happy either way -- and I wasn't in control of the pace anyway -- so I need to learn to be at peace with the fact that things happen when they happen ... and that's that.

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    1. "I need to learn to be at peace with the fact that things happen when they happen ... and that's that"

      So true!

      Melissa, this writing and discovery process is slow for me too. Sometimes I wonder whether I've been placed on earth to learn patience! And so I keep on ... when I look back, I see that I'm making progress but oh, I have so much farther to go.

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  6. Hi! I am back!

    Your 'zen' friend is right. And writing is what a writer does, no matter what. The rest is 'perhaps', but if only one person reads your words, it is worth it.

    Visit me sometime!

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