The Boot Runs Ahead

I left Part One for the last time this week. There will not be another dwelling like such.  

Yet, I found that when I came to its final chapters, I did not want to go just yet. I saw around me a thousand fears and short comings that bid me to stay. 

 

I felt stuck, ironically, very much like a boot in the mud. 

It was then, as if by some chance, that I came across the mark in a chapter very near the end, where, at the beginning, a boot had been carelessly left behind; only there was no boot now, just a footprint deep in the dirt.

The lost boot, it seemed, had gone ahead into pages unread and unedited. Evidently, the thing was up to some mischief, or otherwise late for some plot point I had till now neglected.   

 

 

I couldn't help myself after that, for it seemed the boot was more eager than I, and immediately a million places where the boot could be came to mind. Whether it had been filched or kindled to life, I could only imagine. I know only that it excited me to think of the pranks a single boot might contrive if it were revived and roused to action; or, if it were not such a frisky boot as that, whose mismatched foot I might find it on later.  

And so, I ran off in search of this lost shoe, forgetting altogether to glance back at where I had so long lingered. Like Alice to Wonderland, I jumped down the hole, following the boot out of the familiar pages and into Part Two by the shadow of its laces.

 

As I heard its stomps and romps running ahead of me, I laughed: Now, now the fun begins, I said to myself; all because of some well-placed-disappeared boot; vivified by witchery or a well-timed tidbit left by a thief; just enough to pull the writer through. 

For when boots vanish and run into Part Two without you, anything could come of it. 

 

(Note: Special thanks to Marc who always makes lots of jokes while holding a camera.)

An Empty Room in a Half-Constructed Castle

:Stashing the Discovery Writer into Constricted Chapters and What Happens After

 

There is little advice out there on how to edit a book when you are a discovery writer. Unwritten chapters are always unruly and unpredictable, and we discovery writers thrive in that kind of play field. 

Already written chapters, though, these are much too ordered and familiar, and thus, can feel like a bore, especially when at the end of a series of unedited chapters, empty and unexplored ones await. The discovery writer hopes to make quick business of them, editing them in rapid succession. 

Few things are worse than coming across a chapter and finding that something unnamed is missing. A chapter that feels incomplete can drive the discovery writer to madness. 

For you see, we cannot simply craft good chapters. We unravel them, unearth them from some unknown place. Thus, at times, no amount of skill or experience can capture a thing that does not want to be found out so easily. 

After all, the discovery writer rarely discovers the same way twice, and thus, knew methods of discovery need constantly be found. 

The constricted playing field of an incomplete chapter soon starts to feel like a prison when there is so little room for new things to be stirred. 

 

 

Another writer once said that the first draft of a book is like shoveling sand into a box so that you can build sand castles later.

But being a discovery writer means getting carried away sometimes, and, most of the time, the first draft looks more like a box of sand with half constructed castles left abandoned.

We are much too playful a lot to be expected merely to shovel, and when an exciting idea comes to us, we do not like to wait before the fun can begin, and so, we build fractional castles in the pits we find. If we get bored we simply tell ourselves we will be back later to complete them, and so, we leave them behind, at least, for a time.  

 

So, the discovery writer will inevitably continue on with the brief thought that the castle was almost done anyway and that it shouldn't take too much work later to complete it. 

We can all imagine what happens next: time passes, the writer has many adventures and eventually returns, finding to their dismay that the castle does not look nearly as complete as they remember. 

 

 

 

There are so many things to consider when writing a book. It is easily to forget to note them all. Naturally, there are some things that you do not discover until the second time you pass through. Some things aren't noticed until one has spent a great deal of time speculating and possibly obsessing over a chapter, feeling a bit like a half baked detective who knows in their bones that some detail is being missed but can't quite make out what it is. 

We know still that we have been here. We have vague memories of the fun we had. We do not, however, know what has changed. Is it our perception or the creation that has been altered and left unsatisfied? 

More often than not, once the thing which has so long evaded you is discovered it will be so jarringly obvious you will not be able to think of anything else. Sometimes it is a quick fix of the narrative, a thread with a unintentional loop straightened out or line with a small rift that needs mending. But, sometimes, and that is to say this particular time to which I am referring, one finds oneself inside a small void. 

 

I myself recently came across one. 

I must say, I thought it suspicious when, pausing inside a chapter near the end of Part One, I found that I had carelessly left a whole room utterly devoid. Not a line of description was in it. 

I knew that there was something missing. But how, I wondered, could one misplace an entire room, especially when that room is at the top of a tower? 

 

Now, this would be little to fret over under normal circumstances. The details of a setting are something I do not tend to until I've come through at least twice. But I have been here in this chapter (and thus, in this chamber) at least four times now, and never had I noted the gaping hole that was this rather large, rather baffling space. It utterly escaped my attention, and so, it immediately peaked my interest.

 

The size of it was one thing to consider, for I knew it be a colossal space. I had discussed the view from its windows and drawn the reader's attention to its rising form on more than one occasion. But the inside, I realized, was otherwise a mystery. 

 

I admit, the discovery put an abrupt halt in my progress, and even now, weeks later, I am still here, lost in this empty room, trying to decipher what it means.

 

It is a different kind of discovery I am experiencing now, for in my book I have found a narrative gap in the form of a large room, which, beyond its vastness of size, is much too mysterious and strange to not also have some secret vastness within the plot. 

What ever I fill it with, I know it cannot alter the plot too consequentially; cannot even stray into the chapters surrounding which were completed long ago; it cannot do much but be, and add; cast shadows into the narrative and give flickers of the story.

What else could be stashed away into secret chambers where characters don't so much as utter a line? What else but secrets of the plot?

So, as I shift through its contents and study its walls, I see shadows and secrets unfold. 

I know I have seen these shadows before, in my musings and vague designs; I have plotted these schemes; I wrote these secrets into private notebooks once, and so, it is not their existence that surprises me.

I did not, however, expect to find them here. For the life of me, I cannot remember stashing them all away up in this tower, in this room which, day by day, becomes less empty, but no less puzzling.

That is, perhaps the most perplexing part of it all: for, if I didn't stuff them in this chamber, who did?

 

 

Spending Time in My Printed Book

I have spent the last few months inside the first few chapters of my book.

Part One, which I wrote so long ago, in another province, in a house now far gone, in a time and a life so unlike this one, is a thing of my past. 

I have spent these last few weeks revisiting it, sifting through its words, righting its tilted paragraphs, rummaging through its pages like sheets of music that need organizing. 

First, they were untouchable, black on a white glowing page, easy to erase and alter, to mend and mistakenly correct. All I had to do was press the keys. 

Then, a few weeks ago, they became concrete. 

With the help of my family, Part One, written one summer when high school was done but my new life had not yet begun, was printed now for the second time. But with it came something new; something more hefty and more full of change; something written by a writer so unlike the one who spent more time deleting than she did writing; a writer who somehow learned to write so effortlessly, she almost believed she was doing something wrong. 

 

Thus, Part Two was printed for the first time. The book in both parts was bound by twine and many helpers, as we sliced and organized and punched holes. It had to be bound in three parts, due to its length. 

Furthermore, something both small and great happened: the book was printed with a name. For the first time since I first started writing it, this book that was mine had a title wholly apart from its former one ("my book", a unfitting title altogether, since it will not always be mine.) I always knew it would need a name in order to go out into the world. But I never thought it would come so easily.  

 

But this copy in its incompleteness, in its messiness, with its notes and scribbles and its curled edges, will always be mine. So, as I toil with it, as I get frustrated with it, as I hop across its shortcuts and try to find new ways to write about things that to me are by now old and familiar, I learn that what I love most about this printed being is to hold it, to feel how much it weighs, and remember what it was like to fill out these pages when they were digital and blank. I knew it as the printer coughed it out, and I picked up the pages, and all I could say was "I wrote all of this!"

But, not only did I write it all, I worked for it all; I fought with it all; I got fed up with it; I hurt for it; I lost sleep for it. I wrote every word.

 

Now I get to think about it; I get to fix every fragment and cut up every run on. I get to ponder each word and select some new ones. I get to cut and paste and alter. 

 

So, as I edit Part One for what I hope will be the last time in a while, I resist the urge to rush to the end, to the new stuff yet unread, wholly unedited, but full of tension, and mystery, and murder, and so much more. I resist the urge to call it good enough, and I ponder with my pencil these now printed words. I cross things out. I jot things down. I think about unfinished paragraphs when my mind can wander during long work days.

I tell myself that I do not know when I will be returning here next, to these chapters written before the beginning had yet begun. 

I do know this though: when I return, I will be a better writer than I am now; when I return, I will have written chapters I still know nothing about; I will be one step closer to the last one, what ever numeric title it may bare. I know that it is out there, somewhere on the paper white horizon. 

I know also that the next time I read these chapters I will look up from this book, this book that is mine only for a time, and the life around me will be different too. 

It is strange how thoughts like these affect me: making me both eager to get to the end, and desire to linger here a little while longer.

The Night Before Halloween

Writing Horror on Halloween

 

It was the night before Halloween on which I sat up late, editing a scene which I'd written many moons ago. 

It seemed to get dark earlier that night, and the only thing that was to be seen in the windows was the reflections of the candles I had burning within. 

 

 

Ironically, I wrote about the darkness too. In the scene in which I dwelt that night, there was no light to see by. But, if there is not sight to write about, the writer's pen takes up other senses. The touchless dark has no surfaces or scents. But sounds it has aplenty; sounds to make the imagination go wild, conceiving apparitions, fabricating frightful fancies. I forced them all onto the poor soul who had wandered into the pitch darkness of my scene. 

 

I paused. 

It's dangerous to live this way, I thought, to be so immersed in the page before you that you do not see what goes on around. Anything could happen when the writer is so engrossed in the fictional; anything at all. 

People might be peering into their windows; a cat might creep by through the flickering shadows; a raven may call on the tree just outside. 

Would the writer notice?

Probably not. 

 

Its dangerous to live this way, to take up one's laptop and sit in a chapter all night, neither seeing nor hearing what goes on behind you, or underneath your chair. 

Better not look, that's what I say. It'll only distract you. It'll only give you a fright. 

 

And what goes on in the night is better left up to the imagination. 

Another Rainy Day

I am always growing as a writer. 

Every time I sit down to write, I find I am not the same writer I was before.

The process of growing is a frustrating one mainly because people do not change until the situation forces them to. 
It is usually only when we are forced to face new struggles and challenge new frustrations that we realize: the person we are now is not enough anymore. The person we were yesterday is not strong enough anymore. She is not smart enough, not wise enough or brave enough to face what life brings today, and so, she must become the person she needs to be tomorrow. 

I do not become a better writer by continuing to be the writer I was yesterday. I cannot always speak the same words or write the same scenes. I must always be changing. I must always be searching for something new. 
Yesterday is no longer enough to fill today, but the thrill of tomorrow might be. The thrill of knowing that there are always new words to learn, new things to experience, and new hurts to feel. The thrill of knowing that the future is always one day away and that each day offers a new chance to be better, stronger, wiser, braver. 

And though the person I was yesterday was not strong enough to face this, I know better now. 

And tomorrow will come despite whether or not I am ready.

With every new season, new lessons arise, and this summer I learned to not rely on the rain to give the words.
I love to write when it rains. But, in the draughts and the sunny days, in days spent locked up at jobs and at school as the rain thrums on the rooftops, on late rainy night when the words come like with each drop from the sky, how often did I stop to just listen to the rain? How often did I stop to enjoy them?

So, yesterday, when rain fell and streets flooded, it was time to leave the laptop behind. It was time to stop speaking, and go out and listen to the sound of the rain.

 

A Milestone

 "If a story is in you, it has to come out."

~William Faulkner 

  I started this blog as a way to document my ups and downs as an aspiring novelist, and, as I recently hit a milestone in my journey as a writer, I thought it was only appropriate to document it here.

This last week (though by now many weeks ago) I finished writing the first part of my book. 

Now this really isn't a big deal, because the book isn't long finished, and for all I know it could still be a while before that actually happens seeing as I'm heading off to college in a few short weeks. (At this time only a few days...)

But holy crap! I'm finally getting somewhere! The pages are finally coming into their order! The story is officially on its way!

This journey that I embarked on in my grade seven English class is finally taking me somewhere. And this, this wonderful sensation, has me writing more ferociously than ever before. 

 I just can't waste any more time procrastinating. I have to know where this is taking me! I have to keep writing. I can't stand still anymore! This is my life. This is my journey. My odyssey.

Through all the frustrations, all the times that life gets in the way, I will never cease to find my way back to these pages. These pages are my story. The ink is in my fingers. These words are the life inside my soul. 

Nothing can take them from me.