Incompletion as a Creative Tool

 

Incompletion as a Creative Tool. Photo credit: Autism from a Father’s Point of View by Stuart Duncan

Week 22: The Writing of Novel Number 10, Medicine Snake

By Jeff Posey

Go to Week 1: Anasazi Novels: Writing Number 10, “Snake Medicine”: Week 1

I’m at 56,000 words. Yep, exactly.

Here’s my last sentence: “Men treated him with more deference when he wore a mask made o….”

Drives you crazy, doesn’t it? Mask made of what? If it does that to you, imagine what it does to my internal creative storytelling brain? It’s dying to complete that sentence, too.

I’ve been using this technique lately to jump-start my storytelling sessions. I write to near an exact word count and then I stop in the middle of a word, sentence, paragraph, and scene.

When I pick up the next day, I can feel the pent-up tension to complete the word, sentence, paragraph, and scene. My inner storyteller has been churning on it while I do other things and sleep, and pow, I can start with a long flurry of keys, often writing another several hundred words before I even stop to think about the story. I rather like that.

I’m often surprised, too. I may find out tomorrow my character is wearing a mask made of…coconut. Or jade. Or wicker in the shape of a badger’s nose. Hmmm….

Next time you’re writing something that takes longer than one session, try purposefully leaving it incomplete. See what that does to you when you start again.

How’s it work for you?

Vision Board for “Medicine Snake”

Excerpt from this week’s work on the first draft of Medicine Snake

Tuwa motioned for Masi to allow the emissary, Yook, to pass the guardhouse and come up.

“Alone,” added Tuwa. “Unarmed.”

Masi trotted to a high place above the switchbacks where he could signal the guardhouse and waved his arm twice. The guard waved back, and a man climbed to the top of the wall and then back down, where the guard frisked him. The man looked up at Masi, and began the walk up.

When Yook arrived, Masi told the boy, Hinti, to bring food and water, and then led Yook into Tuwa’s chambers, down the ladder, through a billow of cleansing smoke.

The chamber was so smoky Tuwa could barely see Yook, who dropped to the floor where the good air lurked, and when a passing breeze sucked out the smoke, Yook made eye contact with Tuwa, who sat cross-legged on the north side of the fire. Yook made a motion with his right hand, a single slide in front of his abdomen below his navel, a sign of greetings and a desire to parlay from the depth of his spirit. Then Yook walked the stations of the round room, east to south to west to north and back to center. He sat across the fire on the south side, and Hinti brought him food and water.

Hinti paused, waiting for his piece of elk jerky.

“Not today, boy,” Yook said. “I ate it all up.”

Hinti shrugged and waited for Yook to drain his water and ask for more, and then the boy climbed up the ladder as if gravity didn’t hold him down.

Yook sniffed at the bowl of food the boy brought, and fingered some of it into his mouth. “Fawn stew,” he said.

“A bit thin these days,” said Tuwa.

Yook ate it all quickly, drank the liquid, and licked the bowl as far as his tongue would reach. He belched, just as Hinti brought a second flagon of water. The boy took the empty bowl and raced up the ladder, raising a thin cloud of dust.

“Ah, the energy of youth,” said Yook.

“Wasted on the young.”

Yook laughed. “Isn’t that the truth?”

“So what bad news do you bring?”

“It should be good news.”

“Say it.”

“The High Priest sent orders to Póktu to return to the canyon.”

“Is he departing?”

“That’s the bad news. He’s not.”

“He’s disobeying his blind master? That can’t be good for his career as chief warrior.”

“He won’t leave without your Twins Keeper. Or his woman. Or both.”

“Then he’ll have a long wait.”

“Your people look tired and dirty. We can end this now if you’ll just turn them over.”

“You know very well that will not end this, now or ever.” Tuwa had little patience for negotiations with men he did not and would never trust. Even if Ingta and Uva were at the Twins, he would never turn them over to Póktu.

Yook sniffed. “He could bust through your guardhouse, you know.”

“He is welcome to try.” Tuwa didn’t believe it. At least not without such an enormous loss of Póktu’s precious warriors he would become the most foolish chief warrior in history.

“You’ll run out of water soon.”

“It will rain sooner.”

Yook shifted and put his legs out straight with a grimace on his face. “Maybe there’s another way.”

Ah, yes. Well, there’s always another way.

Especially if you have a mask made o….

Research

I nicked the photo of the incompl te hat Autism from this blog: . The story of how his autistic son responds to stopping a task before it’s completed sounds like the way I would response if I let my inner creative child react without the controls we adults exert on ourselves: Meltdown!

There’s a certain stress caused by not getting everything done you’re supposed to do, or merely want to do. Psychologist Nigel Barber, PhD, writes about it at Psychology Today here: The Lure of the Incomplete Task.

Excerpts from Barber

“Having begun a novel, or a picture, or a piece of music, most creative people find the energy to bring it completion. The lure of the incomplete task sucks them in.”

“If a person sees their entire career as a work in progress, they are constantly trying to improve. Whether it is a runner improving her times, a business owner improving sales, a bricklayer working faster, or a hospital administrator saving lives, these goals stimulate a great deal of effort. Considered in those terms, the incomplete task is a motivator to be reckoned with.”