A Winter Story, part II

Well, this is embarrassing…

A few weeks ago, I was scrambling for an idea. I’ve been remiss with my postings lately and I didn’t want another week to go by without putting something up. It’s not that I haven’t been writing—I’m in my (fingers-crossed) last couple of edit passes with my editor and outlining new projects—but when I’m in fiction mode, it’s hard to shift over to creative non-fiction. It’s what gave me my first idea.

I decided I would partake in an experiment and what is it they say about scientists who experiment on themselves? I wrote 100-word story without preparation, something I don’t do. I hoped, rather than believed, that I would come up with the next 100 words two weeks later in time for my next posting. Over a holiday! Two weeks came and went and nothing came to me.

Photo by Negative Space on Pexels.com

It is a lesson I continually learn as a writer. I’ve had ideas for stories that were only atmospheric introductions with no plot ready, story endings with no idea how the beginning would work, and even names or single lines of dialogue I’ve loved with no story to call their own.

And that’s the gig. It’s not all writing jags and entire chapters that flow effortlessly, although there are those days too.

This was a very long way of saying I’m sorry for not finishing my story on time, but here’s what I have so far:

A Winter’s Story, part II

Bright light…

…filled the dark, cold house illuminating all the things the woman had collected over the years. In the blink of an eye, every item disappeared—all except the star light. Sitting next to the light was a girl, no bigger than a doll. The girl’s wide eyes took in the empty space for a long moment while the woman dropped down to the bare floor, her hands confirming what her eyes beheld.

“It’s all gone,” they said in unison, although the woman said it as a plaintive wail and the girl with gleeful awe.

Both woman and girl were right…

Reacquainting with Rapunzel

I recently re-started editing my book. As you may or may not remember these are the edits I forced during the quarantine and the results were a mess, to put it kindly. I had to leave it alone for a while and then reacquaint myself with my words. It required a lot of “killing my darlings” which was by turns painful and wonderful. It got me thinking about Rapunzel.

After Rapunzel was banished from her tower prison she ended up in the desert pregnant and alone eventually giving birth to twins. The prince, who had been cursed by the enchantress to wander the world was now blind. They found each other and Rapunzel’s tears cured his blindness and then they moved back to his kingdom for happily ever after.

This is where my questions start. After the prince wandered for years and Rapunzel was a single mother, they must have changed. She’d done things on her own in her own way and he moved through the world differently after having been a pampered prince reduced to poverty. It must have been an adjustment. They’d both experienced trauma and had to find their way back to each other, likely over and over again.

It’s what I had to do over this month and a half—find my way back to my words after, let’s be honest, a global trauma. There were times I wondered if I just wasn’t a writer anymore. And yet I did get back to my words and reminded myself that I’m always a writer. I like to think Rapunzel and her prince were able to love each other again despite all the changes just as I fell in love with my words again.

P.S. To my American readers, Happy Thanksgiving!

The Elusive Ooh

Writers are some of the best readers. Many of the same traits that make a good writer are cultivated by good readers. Attention to detail. Love of a good story. Ability to suspend disbelief. But there's a fourth thing that I've only ever experienced as a writer.I've been working on my second novel and the moments that give me the most agita are when I know where something starts and where I need to go, but not how to get there. A plot point will irked me for days, even weeks because I can't figure out how it fits into the larger whole.And then it happens. I poke and prod and reshape and then I find my way from A to C. I find B. I call it the elusive ooh. I call it that because it's usually what I say when I finally crack the code. Kind of like that moment in a fairy tale when it all turns around for the protagonist.It happened when I was thinking about what to post today. I mentally searched my catalog of fairy tales and folk stories, thinking of ways to connect it to my editing woes and then... Ooh, I could just write about my editing woes. Or better yet, how I overcome them.