Finding a Path

At the end of April, which was both an eternity and a moment ago, I posted about managing to write a little that month. I was going to report that I wrote nothing at all in May, but I've just opened up a document and discovered that in fact I wrote several disjointed and instantly forgettable pages.

June has been somewhat more promising for my fictional endeavors, despite more important things in the world not moving in a promising direction. Early in the month, I started a story from a glimmer of an idea, and I liked the character and premise that began developing. As I kept going, I continued to not hate the thing, a big achievement for me. I've now worked on this story every weekday for the past three weeks, often for only 20 minutes or so, but I've stayed motivated about maintaining my streak.

When I embarked on the story, I had nothing more than the strange little detail I opened with, and most days when I came back to it, I didn't have a plan for where it was going next. I've moved ahead a whim at a time, developing a certain amount of momentum and approximating a short story shape. It's getting to the point where a conclusion should be coming, and I still don't have much idea for a reasonable endpoint.

I caught up on my friend Christopher Gronlund's blog recently and was amused to see his last post was about writing a story without knowing where it was going. He makes a nice comparison to walking in the dark without a flashlight: "In many ways, when your eyes adjust, you can see even more in the dark. Maybe not as clearly, but I always feel more aware of my surroundings without a light source because I'm not looking directly ahead at something unnaturally so bright. Sometimes when I have no idea where to go next in a story, or even what to write at all, I feel like I'm on a night hike: it's awkward at first, but I adjust to the darkness in time and find my way."

I'm hopeful that as I keep inching forward on this story, I'll find a path to a satisfying destination. But even if I don't and the story doesn't turn out to be worth further attention, it's a relief that I've figured out how to get writing again, even in the midst of so much darkness.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Joseph Scapellato talks about story shape: "Here is my own understanding of shape: it is a structural container for a narrative. The most important practical quality of a shape—its most useful feature for a writer—is that it suggests 'natural' beginnings, middles, and endings. Any one narrative is going to be made out of many shapes at once, shapes that overlap and intersect and interrupt one another."