This morning I wrote another brand new outline of the last portion of my current fiction.
I’ve always had the same unavoidable ending fixed in my mind, and it’s still there, beckoning me to keep writing, but the route to get to that point has changed to degrees I never imagined. I’m currently writing on page 164, and the events of this story continue to surprise me.
I guess that this is what makes it so funny (and occasionally annoying) when people who find out that I write make suggestions along the lines of “You should write a story about ….” It’s almost akin to asking the impossible. Character driven fiction, I’m learning, is not like a puzzle where you know all the pieces and just have to figure out how to put them all together. Instead, there comes a place where a story becomes a living organism all its own and, as an author, I can only hope to harness it, to give it the control and focus needed to make it a good read. That is a hard lesson to learn.
So far I’ve found myself writing about subjects and issues that I never considered exploring at all. I wanted to create a simple story that told about the beauty of a conversion to Christ. Now, however, what I’ve got has become a very physical tale about the regaining of a father, and of how impossible it is to save those we love if they do not wish that for themselves. It’s grittier than I expected, rougher . . . but the primary principles and themes are inherently those which I find in the scriptures, and maybe that is the key. Those principles are so much a part of me, no matter how much I fall down in living by them, I’d like to think that they can’t help but come out in my writing, even if the lines themselves drag me along to discover a story I’d never expected.
One of my FAVORITE things about writing is that I don't have a fixed ending in mind... or if there is, it's a whisper of an idea to work toward. What keeps me writing is that my characters will surprise even ME when I'm writing because they take on a life of their own.
I also know what you mean regarding writing things you wouldn't even consider. I have a friend whose brother had a bad accident over a year ago now and for months, he was in a vegetative state... couldn't move, talk... nothing. But they noticed he still moved his eyes around. So they hooked up a device and began to teach him to use his eyes to communicate via their movement... not even sure if he could understand them. After months of laying in a bed, his first "words" via the device were "I want my truck back." That story has inspired me to write about a situation like his.
