Tag: writing

What’s What

Out of what I am, what I read, what I know, imagine, and think, come thoughts that I didn’t know, things absorbed which now push up out of my mind’s mantle of thinking and into the novel.

The characters develop sympathies that I didn’t expect. Vulnerabilities and phobias that I’ve never known are introduced. Their attitudes harden. The new attitudes shape their directions and decisions, flexing the story’s direction.

I play catch up with my thinking, but I’m always falling behind. The characters and I go through the story together, seeing what happens and catching our breath.

It’s been a good day of writing like crazy, but it’s left me somber and reflective. After all that’s happened so far, the main character now faces a large metal door. It seems to be brushed steel.

We’re both waiting for it to open.

Even as I contemplate it, the door sneaks open. Whispers of the next conversation float out. “Who are you?”

“I think that’s my line.”

“How’d you get here?”

“That’s also my line.”

So it begins unfolding as doubt and confusion wrestles with truth and expectations, and story forms.

Another day of writing done and gone, at least one more time.

 

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Lapses

I fumbled through routines. Did I feed the cats? Yes, I remembered, I did.

But I didn’t bring in the paper. Oh, yeah, go get it.

I forgot my gloves. Right, go get them.

Jesus, I forgot that refrigerator light bulb. That’s right, that’s right, I planned to go to Ace and get that after I’m done writing, and wanted that bulb with me. Christ, go get it.

You better think. Do you have everything else?

I thought about it. I’d begun the morning by thinking about an intense dream I had. Then the muses took over, writing in my head. They revealed why the other character hadn’t joined yet, and gave me more insight into her eventual appearance.

Scenes kept flowing through me on an unstoppable course. As it happens when the muses push hard, my imagination became switched on full. Story and characters flowed, along with poems and floofinitions.

In the end, though, I had to shove all that aside and re-focus energy and attention on April Showers 1921. It became one of those sessions of typing fast and hard, leaving my coffee almost full, just, I think, a sip and a gulp consumed before I launched into full writing mode.

Finally, three thousand words later, the muses relented. A stop was ordered. I reckoned seventy-five minutes had passed. It felt like I’d totally been in that church were the scenes were taking place, and not in a coffee shop table, typing on a laptop. I’d ignored my posture, of course, so my shoulders were achy from being hunched over and typing as fast as I could.

Good day of writing like crazy. These days are not terribly frequent, but I love them when they come.

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