Arriving Someplace Unexpected
It’s pretty frequent that before writers read in the workshop, they say, “I didn’t get where I wanted to in my writing.” Sometimes they’re saying they didn’t have enough time to finish what they started. But often they mean that they had an idea of where they wanted to end up but something else happened. Does this sound familiar to you? Beginning with an idea of telling a complete story and not getting to the finish means that something else or a great deal of something elses happened as you entered your work. This is a very good thing. The something else is the surprise of creativity, the subconscious genius that reinvents the story and/or the conscious memory that offers texture and detail. These elements are gifts to a writer. If you tell a story as you intend to tell it, the story will have the basic ingredients for comprehension. But basic comprehension is not why you’re a writer. Surprise and strangeness are essential elements of creativity. By allowing the story to tell itself, characters to manage their own phrasing, and memories to tilt toward one mood or another, the story evolves into its own form. Sometimes you begin where you didn’t plan to begin, perhaps mid-dialogue. Or maybe you include atmosphere like weather or ambient noise. These concrete details hold meaning, create subtle metaphor, under score emotions. As you include these additions or reshape the angle from which the story is told, you relinquish complete control, allowing the writing to have its way. You are inside the writing as it becomes more full and more authentic. You ‘lose’ your way and lose a sense of time. When the artificial time for writing is over in the workshop, you may look at what you have produced with surprise. It isn’t what you set out to produce. But you have created a genuine piece of writing that allows you to re-enter and continue when you’re ready. Not getting to where you first intended to go gives way to your own genius.
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