The Writer's Conundrum

I think that the last story I was working on left my character stranded in a snowstorm in Michigan.  She's still there, doggedly trying to make her way downtown, while everyone else is inside where it's warm and safe.  And this other story I was working on left a very interesting man receiving a phone call about a mysterious woman who had woken up from a coma.  He's still there, holding the phone.

And then there's Kebechet, the Egyptian Goddess of Embalming, still prowling the halls of the underworld and waiting for me to come back to her...oh, and let's not forget the five year old Elizabeth Bathory, hiding from her brother in the drafty halls of Castle Cachtice.  She's still hiding.  And the seven foot tall woman from another planet is still hanging out in a bar in far west Texas, trying to figure out who she's running from and why she doesn't fit in.

Interesting, no?

The thing about writing is that writing really is a world trapped in a person (kudos to Victor Hugo, see previous blog entry), and as a writer, it's dreadfully easy to jump between worlds.  It's like your brain is a Tardis, and if you let it, you can end up pretty much anywhere.

Sometimes I think about and work on a story for so long that I have to leave it be.  Sometimes it lies around for years.  And sometimes I can sit with a story and it becomes absolutely vital that I finish telling it.  The man holding the phone was one of those.  He's a first draft.

But this is also why I don't talk about the details too much.  It's not that I don't value other people's opinions.  It's just that they're not flying my Tardis, and too much input can skew the whole journey.

Sometimes, it pays to take a break from the whole serious side of it.  If I'm bogged down in a story, or I'm stuck in a plotline, then I lay it aside and write something lighthearted.  Something completely different...even, perhaps, a different genre than I would normally write.  And I'm usually pleasantly surprised.