Story Thoughts

I feel extremely guilty that I've been neglecting my blog as of late. But I realize that that fact alone tells me something...that I haven't forgotten about my blog! See, if I just didn't care, there wouldn't be this nagging guilt poking at the back of my conscious like that filing cabinet that always spills open when you walk into a room, spewing overpaid bills onto the floor. That actually happened once in a house my parents were looking at two years back. But that's not the point! I just want to let all of my readers know that I still remember my blog and have full intentions of keeping it up.

It's just that sometimes, no matter how much I poke the creative fire, I can't keep the meager flame from dying out. And it happens to all of us. We have the urge to write anything, to just get words on paper, to find that precious outlet for our short cord - a line I stole from one my own stories! - to feel that release of characters, random images, plot lines, a single scene or interesting snippet of conversation...but that outlet isn't to be found. A line from one of the rare Christian songs I listen to by Michael W. Smith comes to mind "it's like wanting to sing, but needing a song." Every time I hear that line - and the song for that matter - it always makes me contemplate things, and even gives me chills! And I can't say that about a lot of songs. When people say "this song gave me chills" I always scoff at that, thinking how can a song actually affect you that much? But this song did. Sometimes we surprise ourselves!

In lieu of that line, that is exactly how I feel sometimes where my writing is concerned. I'll have this great urge, this great swell of words and ideas within me like a thousand puzzle pieces falling haphazardly to the ground and I have to find the uniform picture blindfolded. Then I'll sit at my computer, fingers poised above the keys, ready to fly faster than my brain, or even my own thoughts, but that sudden swell of words and thoughts is gone. A tornado dissipating into swirling tendrils just before it touches the ground. There are a million reasons for this. I know for me most of them involve intrusions from the outside world. I'll admit, I could never completely block out the world entirely when I'm writing. Although today I think I might've managed that while I was writing outside on my laptop. Even still, there are going to be distractions for everyone. The key is to filter out the noise and focus only on your story. Put yourself next to the characters, live their life with them, become the character even. Which is another thing I do. Because I'm a dominantly visual person, I picture the story panning out in my mind and then my fingers act as rapidly moving paint brushes that instead of transferring the image as paint, they transfer them as words. But words can act just like a paint brush, each forming a paragraph, a picture of a character, each connected to the last.

Other times my lack of creative spark will be due in part to a temporary departure from any kind of writing. But just like with my blog I am constantly haunted by the fact that a dozen or more stories are sitting in various stages of completion on my laptop, just waiting for my fingers to return, for that plug to be fit snugly in the outlet. Think of all of these stories I've started as a rural junk yard. There's cars stacked on top of one another like a rotten cheeseburger, there's some with trees and weeds sticking through the hood and windows, there's others with hollowed headlights and just a rusted shell to define itself as once being an automobile and there are those which just arrived, not yet inflicted with the dilapidation that others have suffered.

Now I'm not saying my stories are junk. Well, I suppose that conclusion would be up to you! But what I am saying is that the stories I have saved on my laptop are in various stages of completion. Which, come to think of it is the exact opposite of the junkyard metaphor I just gave but in my defense, that's the way my mind works. Sometimes ideas skip the processing room and go straight to the 'out box.' The problem I have is that while I'm working away on one story I'll think of another and then of course get excited about it and start working on that. Therefore I end up playing hopscotch between three or four stories. Most of them have the same plot line and location - characters living in the countryside in an old house, storms are involved one way or another - yet all of them are blatantly different.

Am I saying some are better than others? I am, yes. For instance, when I was cleaning out the baskets underneath my meager bookshelf - I say meager because it's not nearly big enough - when I stumbled across my first attempt at a horror-supernatural themed novella. It was interesting to read! I'll admit, I hate most of it but the general plot line and characters I love. It's like gutting a house and keeping the outer shell, then replacing everything within it to make it whole again. A few years later, inspired by my favorite television show and a certain Victorian cottage I took a stab at another supernatural-themed novella. This time around I'm more satisfied with this one, but I have yet to dive in completely. Perhaps I've gotten into too much of a rut with the country, small town life and storm chasers but...I believe we should write what we're passionate about, because our writing will be richer because of it, and therefore we'll be able to better connect with readers. The thing is, I am interested in the supernatural, but only from a literary viewpoint, mind you! I'll save the haunted house encounters for my characters.

All of this reminiscing of old stories has brought to mind the first ever novella I attempted to write. I believe I started it in sixth grade. It was entitled Eye Of The Storm. Which is no surprise right? Even way back in the beginning of middle school I was interested in writing about storms. Perhaps I shouldn't worry about writing myself into a rut after all! I still the notebooks in which I began diligently writing the story - by hand - and now get a good laugh out of it. Although it's needless to say, the story was horrible. I had intended it to be about two sisters and their father who live in rural Wyoming and endure a huge thunderstorm that devastates their family and town. Instead, I ended up writing about a million other things and never really got to the storm itself. Then early on in high school I attempted to pick up the story again, only this time I tweaked it a bit, but even then it flopped. I know I can't abandon the story - or characters completely. Hell, I still remember the house I had originally pictured the two sisters from Eye Of The Storm living in, even though I never drew it on paper! Which may say a lot about the visual side of me, or how invested I am in my stories and how real they are to me.

Speaking of visual, I just started working on yet another story today. Like many others, it started with a single image or scene I had in my mind. I call these "story thoughts" because although they're the beginning of a story, they are merely thoughts i am writing down just to give the story a concrete shape, to give my vague ideas something to cling to like a sweaty hand grasing a jutting rock on a slick rock face. This particular story thought that I started today is simply entitled The Bus Stop. Because the scene I had in mind was of a young mother and her five-year-old son waiting outside their - of course! - rural, Victorian farmhouse for the bus to come pick him up. Actually, I remember that I was in the midst of straightening my hair one morning when I thought of a background story for the mother and son. I ended up with six pages after two hours. Tomorrow I'll go back and reread it, then possibly continue on with the next chapter, or rethink some things I wrote.

Although it's not a good trait, I find it very hard to go back and edit my work. I'd rather just leave it the way it is. Which never works for any writer, and I'm trying to change that. I'm not even sure why I feel this way to begin with. I know it's not because my lazy, but perhaps it's because I'm so fiercely defensive of my work. Because each piece I put out there is an extension of myself. Whether I'm reflected in the characters or the plot it doesn't matter. I feel close to any character I create, which I'm sure you can all agree with me!

It's a mystery how a story comes to me. A couple blog posts back I talked about another novella I'd started a couple months ago that started from a mental picture I had of an outdated, 50's-era kitchen within an equally outdated but handsome, brick Bungalow. Now, if you've been reading my blog posts long enough you'll realize just how influential houses are in my writing. Literally everything I write relates to houses, or even if not directly than makes some subtle hint at them. So I guess this story's beginnings really isn't a mystery, seeing at how my second supernatural-themed story, Ties That Bind, was inspired by a beautiful, Victorian Second Empire cottage I only saw once. Yes, I can look at a house once and build a story around it. It happened while I was traveling the country route to the horse rescue farm I volunteer at in Reedsville. Of course I had a eye on the look-out for historic houses, which much to my delight I found plenty of! There was one house that stood out in particular, and even though the image of it is foggy around the edges like an aged pane of glass, I remember the basics of it and when I got home used it as the anchor in another story. All of these random story thoughts not having official titles is what is most vexing. Until I can anchor down a title I feel as if they are simply mighty ships tied loosely to the dock with fraying rope, rather than a sturdy, metal anchor. Of course, like my Creative Writing professor told us, don't under-estimate the power of a title. Sometimes they come at the beginning, sometimes at the end. Sometimes right in the middle! My problem has always been needing that title in the very beginning, needing that anchor to drop to the ground and feel it resting there, that solidity, that assurance that the story won't slip from my grasp, vague ideas fading away like cigarette smoke within a room.

Even with all of that, I have no doubts that my 'story thoughts' will come day become the true novellas they deserve to be. I would find a better way to tie off this rambling blog post but frankly, it's almost midnight and my laptop battery is low! So I'll leave you with this: I am always interested in your own writing habits or woes. Feel free to post a comment at any time. And remember, anything can be a story! If I can write a few chapters on a farmhouse I've only seen once in my life, who's to say you can't build a story out of something just as vague?