Reflections on Writing

Writers create stories but those stories also reflect something back - sometimes it's insight; sometimes it's the fading outline of an event that really happened (give or take a few details like names, people, places and chronology). And sometimes, if we're really lucky and keep our minds still for long enough, stories suggest possibilities for other stories.

I've rarely met a writer who sets off on a creative journey with a detailed plan for a series safely stored away, along with their compass and rations. I'm sure it must happen, statistically speaking, but the writers I am fortunate to know look forward to the unexpected - the character who talks back to the writer (it happens more than you might think), the unplanned plot twist that leaves an answered question (even after 'the end'), or a detail that comes to light in the writing process and begs to be explored. What do you mean, he has a sister?

As it is on the page, so it is in life. The unanticipated is opportunity in disguise. Maybe not the one we wanted, or even deserved, but time and again we read about the tragedy or triumph that inspired someone to write their story (or someone else's!). Who hasn't read about the rejected novel that led - circuitously, perhaps - to the one that was accepted? No guarantees of course, other than that the surest way for a writer to block all opportunity is to stop writing.

I spent years (I was tempted to put that word in bold) on a fantasy novel that then became a magical fantasy novel, to the point wherer I struggled to see outside its bounds. There were short stories, hidden away in old exercise books and never shared, angst-ridden poetry that - regrettably - was shared and morphed into angst-ridden lyrics, and some notes for a future transatlantic novel about real life. That novel is a story I'd never really told because, frankly, I didn't think anyone would believe it. I still don't believe all of it and I was there when it happened. And then came one of those opportunities - a novel writing summer school that showed me how to unlearn my approach and miraculously unlocked new voices with their own stories to tell. Five novels later I'm not convinced their stories are complete, but that, as they say, is another story entirely.

My new novel stalled for months, interrupted by life and death. Well, death mainly, but let's not dwell on that - other people's stories and all... My protagonists haven't learned to trust me yet. Who can blame them when they were neglected for so long. We are strangers in the same room, forced to make polite conversation until we either build up a rapport or at least one of us leaves. But the price of that is a life unlived and a story untold. 

Meanwhile, the characters in that other novel, loosely based upon the past, look out across the mists of time and patiently wait their turn.

I hope the writing journey continues to surprise me - success, or failure, or all points in between. No one ever really knows where anything will lead and that's part of the attraction. As I often quote myself: "The price of adventure is uncertainty."