An Idea is Born

I've never really pursued creative writing because I was afraid I wouldn't have anything to write about! Still, I keep thinking about the old adage, "Write what you know," so I decided to write a book about a woman facing some of the what if's I've pondered (exhaustively) in my own life. Yesterday morning, I started thinking about those issues in terms of writing a story, and soon the ideas were rolling!

My story is about a woman overcoming a terrible personal loss. It will flash back and forth between her current pain and her memories of the past. Eventually, she will work through her grief until she is able to able to see a future for herself beyond just Getting Through Today. This will be a very internal novel exploring how her relationships with her past and with herself change as she allows this situation to make her stronger instead of destroying her.

I kept thinking about my story during free moments throughout the day (in the van on the way to work, walking to the bathroom, etc.). By lunchtime, I had the name of my primary character (Kate) and the two most important secondary characters. I knew her external problem, her internal conflict, and how the story would end. At lunch, I wrote a brief outline with general physical descriptions of these three characters and what types of hurdles the Kate must overcome to move past her pain and grow as a character, as well as some research questions I needed to answer.

I then went home and wrote two pages. It was so exciting to see those two pages in black and white! It was also a little weird, stopping after only two pages when there is so much story to introduce, but I stopped to spend time with my hubby. (I am going to commit to writing at least one page a day; the actual number will vary due to my other commitments in the evenings.)

The great thing about writing a story with a disjointed timeline is that my scenes can easily be moved around if they don't work where they are. That way, I don't have to worry so much about getting what I've already written right before I move on. It also means I can reveal information slowly instead of info-dumping on the first page, both to create suspense at the beginning (what exactly has happened to make this woman so sad?) and also to reveal things about her character as she moves through her memories to let go of the past.

A great example of a successful disjointed timeline is The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, by far the best book I read in 2005. The back-and-forth worked great in that story because of the time-travel aspect, but is also a great way to show how past relationships formed and made these characters into who they are in the present.

It's also a very realistic way to get to know someone: when we meet a person in real life, that person doesn't give us a chronological life history at the first meeting; instead, we get little snippets of the past over time that work together to give us an understanding of who that person is and where s/he has come from. That's how I want my story to work, to slowly introduce Kate to us as she moves back and forth in her own mind between her memories and her present experiences. The past and the present will work together to allow Kate to grow and to become a stronger person, so I want that to feel like a realistic process to the reader.

I found a great quote yesterday: "There is a difference between a book of two hundred pages from the very beginning, and a book of two hundred pages which is the result of an original eight hundred pages. The six hundred are there. Only you don't see them." Elie Wiesel

This means (to me) that any scene I write to flesh out either Kate's backstory or her present struggles will help me understand her character and her story better, even if I don't include it in the final draft. I'm a ferocious editor, so cutting things later won't be a problem, but I really needed to know it's okay to write more than I need because none of it will be wasted.

WRITTEN TODAY: SIMPLE OUTLINE; 2 PAGES (double-spaced)