Your Story Doesn’t Have to Become the Same Old, Same Old…
Even if you’ve done it before, you’re not the same writer you once were.
From Heraclitis:
Everything flows and nothing stays.
Everything flows and nothing abides.
Everything gives way and nothing stays fixed.
Everything flows; nothing remains.
All is flux, nothing is stationary.
All is flux, nothing stays still.
All flows, nothing stays.
He was one of THOSE WRITERS.
He was one of those writers who have not published anything anywhere, but know far better than you do how to get published. He happily announced that he’d failed more of his NaNoWriMo enterprises than he’d succeeded in and that he was happy to guide you to your victory. All of this confided with a wink and a nod, because he really and truly is crushed by both of his self-described and self-created situations.
I hated him on the spot, but then something bigger-hearted in me suggested that I give him a listen. “Everyone has something to offer. You say it all the time, that everyone has a terrific story to tell. How about if you put that into action?”
Against my better judgment, I did. And I wound up being right. Big-hearted me searched high and low, near and far, and came up with nothing.
Well, nothing other than the fact that this person is passionate about their failing to write, to sustain momentum, to take a novel to its desired ends.
There’s something there, isn’t there? Loving your failure and cradling it to your chest while you attempt to drink it, sleep it, eat it, something-bad-for-you-that-you-do-anyway it to a manageable place.
There is no managing away your innermost desire, your most heartfelt dream.
So, maybe you’re better off figuring out a way to make it happen. Come on, you’re a writer. We writers make things up all the time. So, make up something that works for you.
If it’s endless ruminative misery, best stay clear of me. I don’t suffer fools gladly — kind of wish that I did because that would make me feel like a nicer person, but I don’t and I’m kind of glad.
Gives me more time for writing.
You cannot write the same story twice.
Once you have written the story, you are a changed writer. You’ve seen through characters’ perspectives, encountered the baffling and the challenging and either won or lost. Either way, you’re a different person for the experience. You cannot step in the same river twice.
Yesterday, I wrote a scene in my National Novel Writing Month novel. It was pretty darn good and I felt a warm, fuzzy glow about what I’d managed to pull off.
Today, however, over coffee and musing through my morning pages, I realized that the scene was only a very pretty, detailed outline. There was a lot more that needed to happen in that scene, more needed to be said and past history established with a few quick strokes so later scenes have some context and heft to them.
So, I went back in today.
I do not revise as I draft my novels. I don’t. I want to keep on moving ahead, laying down the track so I can return and tear it up and make it better. So, this idea of going back in to something that I thought was done was out of my character, way past what I do.
So, I did it.
I discovered a complexity and poignancy that I hadn’t written in before. The nuggets of past, of key relationships, are now established, waiting to be called in to use later on.
In short order, I not only hit my word target for the day, but I’d added the depth and breadth to a scene that was more pivotal than I let on to myself during yesterday’s work.
I’m in the middle of my umpteenth NaNo challenge. I’ve lost count of how many I’ve done — and that is a good thing. It’s November and November is when I write a novel. Each time is a fresh surprise and learning experience. With every November, I grow my ability to tell a coherent story, become more comfortable having the characters guide the story line, shoving me out of the way so they can get the good parts expressed on the page.
It’s a good thing I have that NaNoWriMo learning under my belt or the whole draft one day/revise and add to it the next day would have whirled me into a tailspin.
NaNo taught me to get the words done, to follow my story heart, and to listen to the characters. The daily discipline of getting the words down and the story flowing has given me the courage to try new things and see how they work out for me. I’ve had so many blow-ups and disasters and terrible, grievous bad problems that I know I’ll make it through as long as I keep on going.
To the happily complacent, full-of-advice-for-everyone-else blowhard, I say you’re enjoying your NaNoWriMo and writing self rewards in NOT getting where you want to go.
Good for you.
I guess. As long as you’re happy with where you’re not getting to go?
For many summers, we did whitewater rafting in the Adirondacks. One of our favorite guides sang songs, entertained us with stories, and taught us exactly what to do when we were stuck or fell in the river or got into some kind of predicament.
He was a wiry old guy who loved his job, loved being outdoors, could not imagine another way of life (or so he told us).
We got to see him in his most favorite kind of action when we went out very early in the season one year. There had been heavy rains and flooding after an exceptionally hard winter with lots of storms and snow. The river was running high and wild. Familiar landmarks had been washed away and some streams had been diverted far off from their usual pattern.
He could not have been happier.
He exulted in the excitement of the unfamiliar, the newly shaped and formed. It was a challenge to find your way, to emerge back into the main river and ride the raging white water.
It was a wild, challenging, incredibly fun time. Same guide, same boat, same eager us. However, the river had changed. It still had the same name and flowed pretty much the same way, but there were changes and nuances and depths we’d never seen before.
That can happen with your writing.
You go into your story with a general map, but just as a wilderness river will flow differently depending on the season and take unexpected turns, so will you — if you’re willing to go with the story that needs to be told. Going along with it and using every capability and ounce of strength you possess as a writer that day is the only way to get anywhere new, interesting, and worthwhile.
You can suddenly succeed when you’d never been able to finish a scene, a chapter, a novel. You can take it out into the world and share it with readers — and then write a new novel taking what you learned and letting the process be itself and you the evolving writer being just the person to ride that same, but different raging river.
Here’s a paddle. There’s the boat and there’s that guide. Get going.
