It’s In the Details

Recently, we stayed at a resort close to the Camelback Mountains, in Arizona. Unlike hubby, who was stuck in meetings all day, I was lucky enough to sit in a lounge chair by the pool and drink in the beauty of these magnificent hills.I sat in the same chair every day. Directly in front of me, “attached to the “head” of the camel, was an outcropping of rock called “The Praying Monk”.” Now, I have a confession to make. Even though I had been at this resort for close to a week, I didn’t see it – the praying monk, that is.

The mountain as a whole had my undivided attention, but I hadn’t bothered to take in the details.

For someone who likes to create shapes out of clouds, I was stumped. And then it hit me – the aha moment when all becomes crystal clear – and when I wasn’t even looking for it. I glanced up from my book and saw it. It was glaringly obvious. There he was, in all his glory: a monk. Head bowed, kneeling in prayer, a cloak covering his head.

After spending nearly a week here, why hadn’t I seen it before? And then it struck me. Just like the Praying Monk, epiphanies hit you with the suddenness of a lightning bolt, when you least expect them. At the moment you stop actively searching for the answers and allow the universe to provide them, crucial insights will surface.

There’s a divine order to these things, I think. Time and again, the perfect solution to a gnarly question falls from the sky: a perfect blending of the right place at the right time and our own ability to put the knowledge into action is all that’s required.

I still shake my head in wonder as I look at the photo of what was right in front of me.

In much the same way the key to moving forward with my novel sits right in front of me. I had allowed the mountain of paper on my desk to stifle my creative flow. All I could see was a vast expanse of white. Was this a novel? Novella?..or maybe a short story! The questions swirled in my head, but I no longer knew.

I couldn’t see what was smack dab in front of me.

Write. And keep writing.

The details will emerge when I get out of the way and simply allow my characters to tell their stories. I’m in the right place at the right time, and I’m more than willing to put this knowledge into action.

Time to Write

Recently I stumbled across a blog post on “How to develop a story for your novel“. The blog’s title says it all for me: ‘Time to Write’.

To backtrack a little, I spent the spring and summer packing up my house. Writing took a back seat, as did visits to the dentist (my abscess tooth moldered in my mouth for a full two months), and anything that didn’t have to do with Moving House.

It struck me that this is a pattern I’ve cultivated in order to avoid loathsome tasks. My mantra had become: focus on one thing, to the exclusion of all else. Did writing a novel fall into the ‘loathsome task’ category? I thought so, until I spent a Sunday morning, recently, surfing the net. Before I knew it, I had read a dozen blogs – all of them were writers’ blogs, as it turned out, instead of the self-help, motivational ones that leave me feeling more drained of motivation than anything.

But after reading Jurgen Wolff’s practical tips on getting unstuck and moving forward with your novel, I realized that writing a novel isn’t what I’m avoiding in my life.

It’s the feelings of not measuring up, not being good enough, and therefore being unworthy. It’s the pain that follows on the heels of these feelings that’s kept me from the keyboard.

Jurgen Wolff has made it easier to stick my toe in the water. I don’t need to plunge headlong into the deep end.

Instead, I can start at the beginning. He suggests asking the question, What if? Start with the bare bones of your character’s life and flesh out a few possible scenarios.

“Sometimes at the end of a string of “what if” explorations you end up with a totally different character or story than you started with. That’s fine, you’re just playing around to explore and you keep going until you have a story you will enjoy writing and people will enjoy reading.”

In other words, what if I could have fun with it?