Spinning The Story Thread

*Thanks, Elisa, for Friday’s post! Now here’s that long-winded reply:

When I get that spark, I like to write about it. Not write it, but a stream of conscious blather that tests and explores the spark. I call these free-writes.

For me, a spark isn’t enough to go on. I’ve tried. Usually, it’s just an exercise in futility, and I end up grouchy at the world that I spent all that time with nothing to show for it.

The free-write lets me take that spark and see how far it goes. It allows me to spin out the story. I take any fibers — story elements — I can first grasp and spin them. As I begin to see what works and what doesn’t, I become more selective with my elements. By the end, I don’t have a rug. I don’t even have a skein of yarn. I have a string that I think is the color and texture I want. Or at least something closer than what I started with.

Then I wait.

I have stories sitting, waiting for my attention that are far more ready to come into being. I can work on those while I wait to hit upon how I want to use that new thread I’ve just started. I’ll sketch the pattern as it comes to me, a bit at a time. And maybe the thread I started with won’t do quite what I need it to do. So that has to change before I start.

This is not to say that I don’t hurry stories before they’re ready. But the more hurried they are, the more I have to take out and redo to make it what I imagine it to be. It all eventually comes out the same.

Rarely do I re-read the free-writes. The act of writing it usually cements it in my brain, one way or another. Yet I never throw them out. If I did, I would find I needed it. And the ones I have read are fascinating for the record of how the process works for me.

Everyone has a slightly different process, and sometimes they’re wildly different. I find them all fascinating.