Open for anything...
This is a great way to think right now, in this time of world pandemic. We all need to keep ourselves open to whatever might happen. And that needs to be the same when revising. I need to stay open for surprises, obstacles that need another approach, the story not unfolding how I want it to. I know this is true when I'm in the white-hot heat of creating the first draft - but it also needs to be true now. When I get scared and think that I have to revise this manuscript to fit some solid notion of how a "good" story goes, I lose my nerve, and I lose the ability to swerve and dance and play with what is before me. Yesterday I lost my nerve for a bit. I went into the wonderful resource The Writer's Knowledge Base and looked up plot structure. I found a great article by Jami Gold that has Elizabeth Davis' spread sheet on the 'Save the Cat Beat Sheets Spread Sheets for Novelists' . I plunked in my info - mainly word count and page numbers and let it tell me when things 'should' happen. Things like 'All is Lost' should happen on page #'s xxx to xxy. I usually don't do that, because I mostly trust my intuition. And if I was way off would I want to know? But I was freaked out. Would I have to undo the whole thing? Start over? Deep-six the thing?
Well, guess what? I don't need to do any of this - because my intuition is still working. My beats are hitting pretty much when they are supposed to and I can use the spreadsheet to fine tune what I've got and help me sail into the ending I want for my story. Whew! If I hadn't been open to trying something different I would really have been churning in the mud of despair.
Now, excuse me, but I've got work to do!
1 comment:
Definitely being open to whatever comes is crucial, Jan, especially now when we don't know exactly what's around the bend. That way, we're more flexible and adaptable. It makes me think of a couple of Buddha's quotes that help me. One is, The future is impenetrable. The other is Be here now..
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