A Break Through

After a full day of work, I relax in bed by focusing on story ideas.  Sometimes, this is the only time of the day that I am able to really think about my stories.  It is exciting and calming all at the same time.  And unfortunately, most of the time, I am not writing anything down.  It's a way for me to think that I'm making progress without actually making any progress. (More on this bad habit later.) This time, though, I did.

I had a dream a few years ago that lasted for three nights, and on the final night, the mystery was solved.  Most of it didn't make any sense once I woke up, but the world that the characters inhabited stuck with me.  I tried to reconstruct the plot that played out in my dreams and turn it into something that would actually make sense.  That would rive a reader to continue on.  This proved to be difficult.  I had a world, but I didn't seem to have any motivation for my characters.  Why would she leave home?  Why would she need to get to the capitol?  And in this idyllic town, what is actually lurking underneath?  Nothing seemed to piece these things together, and I was left with a world and no plot.

A few months ago, I was inspired by, of all things, a post online.  It was simple, and from that, I began to create a character that would in habit that thought.  She would be different.  And this difference would make her an outcast.  Through this life as a pariah  she would discover that things in her world weren't exactly what they seemed, and her culture, religion, and way of life would all be questioned.  However, I was stalled with creating what exactly her world would look like.  And once she becomes an outcast, what would that mean for her?  Where would she go?

I worked for a while on developing these ideas separately: Going through the history of the fantasy realm first glimpsed in my dream, and slowly piecing together the social interactions of the community in which the outcast lived.  The stories were at a standstill.  The only words on paper were smatterings of ideas, outlines, and source material for more research.  The ideas were growing stale, and I focused on them less and less at night before bed.  I started to shelve them for another time when I was more inspired, and moved on to other ideas.

At the beginning of this week, as I lay in bed, I had a break through: Join the two stories.  World, meet character; character, meet world.  It seems extremely obvious now, seeing both story issues laid out in print, but they were so separate in my head, that when I first had the thought to combine them, I had doubts.  But what about the special differences between the two?  And then I realized, those details were not important, and weren't working anyway.  And when I accepted it, the story jumped ahead, and suddenly I had two different religions, how the passing of a year is marked, a festival, geography, lore, and why my main character would leave home.  There is still a long way to go in shaping characters, creating the world and its history, and planning out key plot points, but it's a start.  It's a start, and I am inspired again.  Will it lead me to finish a novel?  I don't know.  I just can't believe how obvious it is to me now, and why I could not see it before.

So go out and take a look at a few old ideas you have that you have stalled on.  Now turn them around.  Look at them from the ending first.  Combine two ideas to see if they could exist in the same universe.  The goal is to look at them in a different way.  Even if you cling to that dusty old idea, and hate the thought of tearing apart the fragile pieces you've already built up, try it anyway.  I promise, you can go back to the original idea afterwards.  But after imagining the story in a different way, you might not want to.

Writing Exercise: A Chance Meeting

500 words

Take two story ideas that you've shelved.  Take them down, dust them off, and set them up on a crisp, blank page - either on screen or paper.  For both options, this must be an entirely new page, separate from either story idea.

• The main character from each story are the two characters in this scene
• The location is your choice
• Somehow, these characters have come in contact with one another.  The scene can address how they came into contact, or you can choose not to explain.
• Let the scene happen

Happy writing.

An Invitation

I had two friends in middle school who would listen to all of my story ideas.  With one friend, I had her read roughly 60 pages of a story I had been working on.  With the other friend, we would sit at her house and take turns reading stories out loud to each other from Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine (oh yeah, I was one sought after middle-schooler).  She even bought me a journal for my birthday with a custom cover that she drew, specifically titled for one of my story ideas.  I clearly remember, as I let another story idea escape my brain, she said to me, "You should write down every story idea you have.  Adults would love to have as many story ideas as you have every day."  And I had smiled, thinking that I would never be one of those adults.  I couldn't imagine not having stories jut into my daydreams, keep me up at night, or latch on to me at the most random moments.

All through high school and college, stories would come to me.  From snatches of news stories, conversations, or two subjects that my brain found a link to, they would be there.  I looked forward to the blank page and the blinking cursor.  Even while majoring in creative writing, it didn't feel like work.  They were stories that needed to be put on the page, no matter how strange they were.

Then I graduated.  And got really sick.  When I was diagnosed months later and medicated, I focused on finding a full-time job.  Finally, after working for two years with a non-profit, where I used all of my creative energy on ideas for my job, I found a new job that required a little less of that creative energy.  I job that I thought would give me time to relax at night and allow me to write, stress free.

Now I find that whenever I sit down at my laptop or pull out a journal, I'm stricken with terror.  It's always the same, irrational fear: The words won't be there, and I'll write a story that only uses the verb "to be" and has too many adverbs.  I have reached a new place in my life as a writer that I've never experienced before.  I am afraid to write anything.  This very blog post stresses me out as I type each and every letter.  Why is that?  Why is something that I've been doing since I was in second grade (with a very interesting picture book about a girl whose house is destroyed by a tornado -- yes, even then my stories were dramatic and slightly unsettling) suddenly become a chore?  Comparable to making my bed or putting away the laundry?  I keep putting it off, making plans, and then breaking them.  Each month it seems I make a new commitment to "start writing again," but when I stay up late (prime time for my creative juices), I just end up doing what I normally do on my laptop -- wasting time in the void that is the internet.

Some might say what I have is writer's block.  This may be true.  The fear has certainly driven away any hope of a decent story idea.  That conversation with my friend from long ago bubbles back to the surface.  But what disturbs me is that my writer's block has never frightened me this way before ("You haven't read enough Austen!...What do you mean you aren't sure if this sentence calls for a semicolon!?...How could you not know what that word means?!" my subconscious seems to say).

At this point, readers, I can feel all of the eye-rolls from here ("Ugh, will she stop complaining already?")  The truth is this: I am only going to get better with putting time into my craft again with study, reading, and most importantly, writing.  Writing ANYTHING.  Writing through all of the hopeless crud that would make all of my senior seminar classmates, as well as my professor, cringe.  And they would all tell me the same thing:  It doesn't matter!  You just have to keep writing!  So, thanks.  You're all still in my head, even four years later.

I also realized that it's ok to let go of some story ideas.  That all of those ideas that poured out of me in middle school were not necessarily important to keep.  If I can't remember them, they probably weren't worth it anyway.

In conclusion, I'm formally inviting you all to join me on this journey as I sit and, hopefully, write.