Easy. A crumb here, a cable there, so many things to eat, chew through, and run up. Then there’s cuddles with Malia and
Hey, come here you rascal…here, in your cage.
I like this question. It’s something I think about a lot. In fact, I’ve written about it on my Substack ‘Walking in Divine Mysteries’ which you can find here. And I’ve got many posts on Instagram exploring some of the things I’ve been doing to help me discover the story.
My stories usually start with an image that pops into my head. And then more images start to join that one. My current work-in-progress, Skin & Bone, started with an image of a person hiding in the shallows of a lake, sitting there, watching. And someone disappearing by becoming drops of water and falling into the lake. Those images kept popping into my head. They intrigued me. I knew it was the beginning of a story and I wanted to find out who they were and what was happening in their world. I knew it couldn’t be our world; similar but not the same. And that’s where it started.
Once I’ve got the seed of a story I also begin to notice songs, colours, moods that tell me more about the story and this continues during the whole writing and re-writing. The story is continually changing and growing as ideas begin to transform the story. I often don’t know much at all during the first draft (the discovery draft) but as things keep coming to me I get more and more clarity about the story. It takes time and I feel like I’m entering into the depths with God and He’s doing all the work and I’m just listening and hopefully aware enough and hearing enough to embrace what He is saying to bring it into the story. It’s a beautiful process of trust.
I love the creative process. It’s hard too but mostly because of the demands of everyday life. You’ve got to be consistent to make the time to write. It’s very easy for the busyness of life to take over and to not write for long periods of time. Once I’m in front of the computer and writing, the joy just flows – even when it’s not coming together on the page, because I know it will get fixed later. When I can’t make a scene work or still have too many gaps, I know I just need to trust and to keep turning up to fill in those gaps. Eventually the story will be as complete as I can make it.