So, I was trying to get my head around this mess of a story that I have, when my husband-- in his always infinite wisdom-- told me I needed to find some way of tying all the pieces together.
I had bemoaned how my story had not only shifted time-frames in the writing process, but also shifted complete plot points. Granted, I have most of the same characters that I started out with, though quite a few others have joined the cast. But, the essence of what I thought my story was has suddenly become something unrecognizable.
It's sort of like those "Connect-The-Dots" sheets that elementary teachers were so fond of handing out for busy work--- I think they must get secret stashes of the sheets in their teacher survival kits. There was always a different sheet for every different "busy work" episode.
Unlike most of my peers, I thoroughly enjoyed running my pencil line from numbered dot to numbered dot--- there was something thrilling about seeing the page of seemingly random dots slowly become a fully formed figure. I never had problems completing most of the sheets as I was eager to see what picture would emerge.
The only time I did have trouble would be with the more complex sheets---the ones that combined numbers and letters---the ones that created layered designs if you used both paths. The problem that arose with these sheets occurred because I was in such a rush to see what picture would form, that I failed to pay close enough attention to where I was marking my line. Suddenly, the number 13 was the letter B, the number 12 was the letter R, etc....and before I knew it, I had a twisted mess that didn't look anything like it was supposed to look.
Story writing is very much the same as the "Connect-The-Dot" sheet, we don't have a clue what the end result of our story will be...even for all our planning and plotting and early drafting, there is no way to know for certain what the final picture will look like until we have every dot connected.
The only thing, I must make sure to slow myself down when I am playing my dot-connecting game or I may construct a picture that makes no sense. I can't allow my numbers 12 and 13 to be confused with R and B .......otherwise, instead of a wondrous Amazonian butterfly collage, I'll be stuck with a Mona Lisa that looks like she came from the planet Vulcan......
I had bemoaned how my story had not only shifted time-frames in the writing process, but also shifted complete plot points. Granted, I have most of the same characters that I started out with, though quite a few others have joined the cast. But, the essence of what I thought my story was has suddenly become something unrecognizable.
It's sort of like those "Connect-The-Dots" sheets that elementary teachers were so fond of handing out for busy work--- I think they must get secret stashes of the sheets in their teacher survival kits. There was always a different sheet for every different "busy work" episode.
Unlike most of my peers, I thoroughly enjoyed running my pencil line from numbered dot to numbered dot--- there was something thrilling about seeing the page of seemingly random dots slowly become a fully formed figure. I never had problems completing most of the sheets as I was eager to see what picture would emerge.
The only time I did have trouble would be with the more complex sheets---the ones that combined numbers and letters---the ones that created layered designs if you used both paths. The problem that arose with these sheets occurred because I was in such a rush to see what picture would form, that I failed to pay close enough attention to where I was marking my line. Suddenly, the number 13 was the letter B, the number 12 was the letter R, etc....and before I knew it, I had a twisted mess that didn't look anything like it was supposed to look.
Story writing is very much the same as the "Connect-The-Dot" sheet, we don't have a clue what the end result of our story will be...even for all our planning and plotting and early drafting, there is no way to know for certain what the final picture will look like until we have every dot connected.
The only thing, I must make sure to slow myself down when I am playing my dot-connecting game or I may construct a picture that makes no sense. I can't allow my numbers 12 and 13 to be confused with R and B .......otherwise, instead of a wondrous Amazonian butterfly collage, I'll be stuck with a Mona Lisa that looks like she came from the planet Vulcan......
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