On “Real” Writing and the Shifting Nature of Ideas

So I’ve been doing more and more “real” writing lately – and by “real” I mean fiction. Woohoo, she said! And I’ve started noticing something odd. Ideas that I think are fairly limited and/or well-defined and therefore going to turn out to be short/very short stories (think 750 – 2000 words, max) keep morphing into long things (running thousands of words of set-up/backstory). Things that I thought were going to be very long and involved with tremendous detail, background, and character development – in short, novel/whole book ideas – why they keep turning into short stories. It’s very weird to me.

I alternate between being very upset at this and thinking it is a Very Cool Thing.

On one hand, it freaks me out and makes me think that I don’t know anything about my own ideas. I mean, if even I can’t tell if something is a Big Idea or a Small Idea – and they’re MY ideas – how on earth is anyone else supposed to know what to make of them? Shouldn’t I understand my own thought processes, my own writing style? Shouldn’t I know where I’m going? If not me, then who?

On the other hand, it is pretty cool that the words have lives of their own. I have long heard it said that stories exist to be told, that characters will go where they want to, that storylines and plots develop organically. My own experience lately certainly seems to support these theories. And I must confess, I think that it is pretty cool that the stories in my head aren’t limited to the words/ideas in my head – if that makes any sense. What I mean to say is, I rather like it that my head (mind, brain, spirit, imagination, whatever) keeps churning away on ideas subconsciously even after the conscious bits are being put to work. It reinforces my long-held belief that some people just have stories in them that need to be told – and it makes me insanely pleased with myself to have confirmation that I’m one of those people!

I also think it’s cool because it gives me some measure of comfort that I am not limited by the current shape of my ideas. Occasionally, I get a tish discouraged when I seem to hit a wall with an idea, when I just cannot figure out where to go next and the words will simply not come to me. But if ideas have lives of their own beyond me/my original vision for them, then there really aren’t walls like that, now are there? There may be momentary (or even daily/weekly/monthly) pauses, but they don’t necessarily mean the ideas are dead or that I’ve lost my mojo. Maybe the ideas are still marinating, growing, developing. Maybe they just need some time to germinate and plan out their own next moves. And maybe that means it’s okay to not try to force the words sometimes.

I’ve never been a big believer in forcing writing (unless I’m up against an absolute deadline wall, which has occasionally happened because of my unfortunate proclivity toward procrastination). If the words aren’t coming, forcing them out of my head only means (a) a very painful day, (b) lots of wasted time, (c) a lot of rewriting later. I’ve always been more of a “when you are in the writing mood, the words will come” kind of girl. Now, this is occasionally a dangerous thing for me because of said procrastinatory tendencies. But generally speaking it works out all right, because when the words do come on their own, they tend to fly out of me. Which is a very nice thing because it means that even if I got stuck with a very short amount of time to finish something, I can usually bang it out in time.

There are a lot of authors who have spent years writing novels – revisiting ideas, reworking them, dancing around other ideas/projects/activities while their stories continue to develop – so I guess the fact that I haven’t finished one in the four months that I’ve been focusing on writing doesn’t make me a total failure. (teehee) And I guess it is also a good thing and a positive sign that I have seven things ongoing, in various stages of (earlyish) development, and that new ideas come to me regularly and demand to be written down and expanded upon – regardless of what other things I was planning on doing that day. Better to have too many ideas than not enough, right? And I will finish one – whether one book with one story or one book comprised of many stories remains to be seen. I just don’t know when. Then again, maybe that’s an idea that’s still germinating too… 😉