Story ideas often pelt at me like rain drops during a spring shower. They cluster on my forehead and fingers, accumulating in a slick that cools or shivers. Sometimes, I skip through the storm to jump in their puddles. Other times, I dash towards shelter with my head bowed. You can get blinded by a flurry of ideas striking you, especially when each one demands attention.
Pick me! Pick me!
Having a wealth of stories is not always the best problem to have. I rather prefer the hailstorm or the blizzard. The idea that buries you… that accumulates so fast and hard that ignoring it proves impossible. The idea that builds, one flake upon the other, gathering in the restlessness when one tries to go to sleep and haunts you upon waking. The one that traps you and presses against you. That you need two hands and a shovel for and elevates your heartrate. The one that you risk hurting your back for.
Still, that’s not where I was.
In October, my story folder plumped up. Ten, twenty stories high. Each one filled with curiosity and chuckles, but none torrential enough to hold my attention or powerful enough to dissuade me from checking out what lurked in the next row of the candy aisle. Oh, I was drenched with ideas. My bag of Halloween treats overflowed. But all these stories led to paralysis. They clambered onto my back with loose grips. They were too easily thrown off even though they lurked around the corners, whispering, “Remember me?”
I stood unable to commit. How do you choose among your children? If you can only play with one which one are you willing to disappoint?
The answer it turns out was to turn the responsibility over.
At a write-in, I confessed to Liza and Emily my problem and asked which to pick my next project. Without hesitation, Liza said, “The really weird one… the first contact one!” Emily nodded. Earlier, another peer and colleague, Phil, had told me that I was mistaken about that very story. See, I thought it was a short story. I had wanted it to be a short story. He disagreed, insisting there was too much good stuff already built in and that I could never explore it all in four or five thousand words. I could never do the story justice as a short story.
He was probably right. By that time, my “short story” had already grown to eight thousand words. A bit hefty even if I tried to aggressively prune it with my red-line shears.
So, with the story chosen for me, I looked up into the rain and challenged the sprinkle to do its worst. I reread what I scribbled, editing a bit as I went, gripped my galoshes and tightened my overcoat. I willed the shower to become a tsunami.
And the dam burst.
I wrote like a fiend. In less than three weeks, I pounded out fifty thousand words. I took a two day break to line some sandbags and buy provisions, but then squinting at the lighthouse, hydroplaned through another ten thousand words.
When I blinked the water clear, what stood before me was the finished first draft of a novel.
Oh, I still have plenty of horses on the carousel to ride, but thanks to my friend the next novel is done… well, except for the editing J
I wish it would happen like that for me. I find the writing stage the hardest part.
I hope it does and I trust that it will… or that it will in spurts. For me, one of the tricks taught to me when I worked with the Jim Henson gang is to be forgiveness. “The job of the writer (during the first draft)” to paraphrase Frank Oz, “Is to be a fool! Just go for it!” Once I embraced that and forgave myself for the clumsiness that sometimes happens in a first draft, writer’s block has almost never become an obstacle.