In A Beautiful State Of Mind

I cannot begin to tell you what a very exciting place I'm in right now. Everything is so magical and awesome. Actually...I lied. I guess I can begin to tell you what I thought I could not because, well...I'm about to.

I was becoming a bit frustrated with the fictional writing thing. Truth be told, I have not been living up to my 8 hour a day writing frenzy I set out to achieve. Instead, there was a little writing here or there with a little bit of excitement but not a lot.

The first story I set out to write had some promise. It wasn't so much a story as it was things that were happening. The idea here was to come up with something and see where it went. After a couple of days, I realized that I didn't like the story. To be clear, it wasn't that I liked the story when I started and then hated the story a few days later. I didn't know what the story was when I started. I just had one event that led to another and so forth and so on. After mapping out 5 or 6 "scenes", I decided to try and figure out where the story was going. Applying some guesswork and coming to some conclusions, I realized I was on a path to writing a story that I would not want to read.

This first attempt wasn't a complete failure as it allowed me to acquire some knowledge about my writing ability. There was one thing I learned that was very important. Figuring out what was coming next in the story was very difficult for me. I learned that I have some insecurity issues with putting words down on the page because they might suck. I think this issue might have more to do with wasting time rather than worrying about how good my material is. For some stupid reason, I feel the need to get everything thing right the first time even though that kind of thinking doesn't apply to this sort of work. I hope that if I become successfull at writing, that little issue goes away.

But that's not the important part. Whereas it's hard to see where I'm going when I'm writing, it is the polar opposite for me when it comes to looking back. After I have written an event, thinking it through and putting words on the page, I can see that event with such clarity in my mind, it's like remembering a movie that I just watched. With my mind, I am able to see everything, covering all the angles and knowing full well what is going on in my character's minds. After I write down an idea, I have a vivid memory of something that never happened. That is fucking wild.

I made a brief second attempt at writing a story based on a dream that I had that I may work on in the future because I think it was a good idea. By the way, the reason I didn't tell you what my first story idea was is because I still may find a use for it in the future. As for the second story idea, I think it's a good one and I look forward to revisiting it should I continue writing after I finish my first story. I stopped writing the second story when I came to a realization.

Now the following might seem obvious to you types of people who read books in school, paid attention in reading class and didn't take two years of summer school english. To those of you who think me silly for coming to my conclusion, I say to you, "Bla! Where's your book?" But I digress.

Upon listening to the book, The Green Mile by Stephen King, I realized something. I don't know the count, but in the book, he has a number of events and the rest of the book is getting to those events. For instance, he lets you know that the French guy is going to have an awful execution. Then he takes you through small events that lead up to that execution. Then he gives you the big execution. Then he starts you down the next path that will bring you to the next big event.

Now, the biggest problem I've come across when I've tried to write fiction is not knowing where I'm going. Again, it comes down to wondering if I'm wasting time. In the past, I've had problems when I've tried to realize the end of the story early in the writing process. My fear has been that, "OK. I've got my ending so I know where I need to go but I'm writing this story now and actually, it seems like I'm going somewhere else. Shit. Now I've got to rethink the ending." You do that once or twice and suddenly, the task of writing becomes tiresome.

But this new realization...Creating big events and then moving from one to another. Well, I thought that could be interesting. So I wrote down an idea that for some reason keeps popping into my head. I don't think there's any harm in telling you what that is. Four guys go into the forest. Simple enough, don't you think? So then I had to come up with stuff for them to do. My goal was to come up with a beginning, 5 big things to happen, and then an ending. I can tell you that my biggest fear while taking this approach was making sure I didn't copy any other 4 men going into the forest stories.

You know, I'll be damned if this process wasn't that hard. I practically rattled them all off. One or two of the events, I wasn't specific with because I wasn't sure of the details, but coming up with the other events and the ending gave me the ideas I needed to fill in the blanks. When I was done with that yesterday, I had to stop because I was feeling overwhelmed. I felt like I had an amazing power but I didn't know how to use it. Plus, I've noticed in the last week or so that when I'm being creative, my brain feels all sparkly as if I wasn't using a lot of it before, but now I'm using all of it.

One thing though. Ever since yesterday when I finished my little outline, I've been a little bothered because I didn't think one of my big events jived with the other events and I didn't know what I was going to come up with to replace it. Today, I decided the next step was to write out brief overviews of my big events and when I got to the troublesome one, I begrudgingly tried to figure it out. As you might very well guess, that event is now my favorite and one of the backbones of my story. Unbelievable.

So here's why I'm excited. I have mapped out a story that I like and want to write. I know where I'm going but I have some flexibility. It's like there's a big beautiful well lit path layed out before me and all I need to do is follow it. (I wonder if it's that exact thinking that inspired the writer of The Wizard Of Oz to bring us down the yellow brick road.) The reason the world is so beautiful right now is because before I didn't know if I had what it takes to create an interesting story. Well, now I've done that. Now, everything is about getting to where I'm going. UN-BE-LIEVABLE.

Talk 2 you all l8r.
Dave