Challenges: Stuck yesterday (and for several weeks) on Chapter 12 of WIP without knowing why, and without a solution in sight. I've been wrestling with reconciling four different story lines into one in order to create a series. I printed the notes already at hand for all four stories and played "paper dolls" with the slips of plot and time lines.. The only way to resolve the challenge was to place all the stories in one town - not the original plan. Yet a picture, or more realistically, an overall story began to take shape.
Choices: But that brought about its own set of challenges! I had to determine when and where to work characters from one storyline into another without their taking over the current WIP. Still, the thought processes triggered the heat that melted the block. I realized that I needed to create an entirely new chapter, three chapters back. In progress now. But then the domino effect will need to be traced through the ensuing chapters to make sure the desired conclusion is reached. Hey, that sounds like work!
Changes: Being willing to make significant changes in what I considered a finished product, was the catalyst to
a better story line and the resultant thrill of accomplishment. Isn't being flexible to consider alternate routes to the same destination part of the fun?
My dad was a great back-roads adventurer. Sometimes it resulted in getting "a bit" lost. As a pre-teen with a better sense of direction than his, I was often impatient, as I'm sure my long sighs revealed. But to this day, I'd rather take a back road than the highway any time. Poet Robert Frost said it well: :...Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference."
How about you? What alternate route might you choose today to add a bit of adventure to your journey?
Like your Dad, I get lost "around the block" so I am always going off somewhere weird...even with the GPS if you can believe that. (Actually you can..you've driven with me!)
ReplyDeleteBut I suspect that if we just "go with the flow" there are times when we find ourselves on an alternate route -- whether that's a real cement road as we skim over it in our cars...or something more figuritive and also more critical...like reworking a project or changing jobs or saying good-by to a comfortable but dangerous habit or person... when it is really God who is orchestrating that change. I am reminded of Jeremiah 29:11...my favorite scripture verse of all time..."For I know the plans I have for you," says the Lord. "Plans for good and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope."
Good job. I really like you 3 C's format and how you're able to stick to it.
ReplyDeleteI would pick the road less traveled every time! In fact, I hope to live on that road someday :)
ReplyDeleteI think there's a "house by the side of the road" in another poem, Meghan. Maybe it has your name on it. I looked it up and found it's by a poet whose other work I've admired...Sam Walter Foss.
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