Something Like Fate
There are moments in life that will delight you like no others but won’t mean a single thing to the next person. When you try to explain, you will be met with silence, puzzled expressions, and staring. Yet the moment will still be the bright moment of your day, week, month, or even year. You won’t care about the people staring at you because you are just too excited to care.
Thank goodness my fiancé is a writer. He understands.
My bright moment came while writing my novel “X” the other night. I love when you’re writing your story and something just falls into place. Like the one ton weight falling from the sky in a classic cartoon, the element is suddenly there, falling on the exact right spot.
For example, I have a character who has been reading a book since I wrote his first scene. He not only reads the book, but when he finishes, he pauses for a moment and begins reading it again.
When I wrote his first scene where he was reading the book and wrote later scenes with him reading it repeatedly, he, the book, and the reading had no point. I just knew I would need at least one extra body in the story, and I knew I wanted him reading a book.
Much to my delight, pages later and still reading his book, he took on a new importance which influences not only “X” but all the following books as well. He turned into the important figure I didn’t know I needed and became the owner of the book already mentioned in following novels I already have finished.
Ah, I love it when things fall into place. What I love even more is my fiancé just smiles when I stand up and, without a word, start dancing around the living room.
Have you had any wonderful moments like that in your writing?
January 29th, 2007 at 7:00 pm
Completely different type of thing, but I had a recent moment like that - the receiving of my first reply to a query.
January 29th, 2007 at 7:41 pm
Where it all just fit together? Tell me more.
January 29th, 2007 at 8:22 pm
Well, this was a few months ago, actually. Definitely before Christmas. I’d mailed out my very first query via snail mail and I’d been checking my mailbox every single day, at least three times a day (I kid you not), even though the site said they’d take 2-3 weeks to reply. Then one day I went to check, and saw my SASE sitting there. I’d already told myself that it was most likely going to be a form rejection and that I was just going to have to deal with that. I took up off to my room (cause I wanted to read it alone, in case I had a screaming fit if it was good news…LOL). Anyhow, it WAS a rejection, but that’s not the point. The point is that it…just seeing the envelope..and just having sent off that query (it’s SOOO much more real-feeling to do it by mail than email), I felt like a real writer. Not just that wannabe college kid that spends too much time writing. But a genuine bona fide writer who wants to get published.
January 29th, 2007 at 8:29 pm
Oh, I understand completely. I had that feeling the first time I sent something off to be published, when I got the check in the mail from it, and when I got the copy of the book.
I still feel like that even now. I just sent off a short story to a competition which could basically make my career. It’s invigorating to do it the snail-mail way.
I just wish I would have saved all my rejection letters. Just a thing for me, though.
January 29th, 2007 at 8:33 pm
I’ve got mine sitting in my desk drawer still, even after a few months. Just girding up my resolve to do it again. LOL. Fragile ego of a writer and all that.
January 29th, 2007 at 8:43 pm
I just think of it as one more agent/publisher I can look back at later and smirk when I finally get published. I don’t have my copy here, but in “Chicken Soup for the Writer’s Soul” it lists something like forty major authors who got rejected from ten to forty times. Including Dr. Suess and Stephen King.
January 29th, 2007 at 9:13 pm
Absolutely. They’ll all come crying and begging to me when I’m a gazillionaire writer. mwahaha.
LOL
January 29th, 2007 at 9:15 pm
Well, I wouldn’t go that far…
January 29th, 2007 at 10:31 pm
Sometimes the mind knows best & it’s a lovely feeling when it decides to inform you of what it’s been sneakily planning all along.
It keeps a muse amused, I tell you. they live for those ‘ahah!’ moments & sit there on their conjunctives, smirking mightily at the trick they’ve played on you. A Pos on their Trophe I think!
*grins*
January 30th, 2007 at 12:23 am
Hehe. Sounds about right.
January 30th, 2007 at 1:07 pm
I managed to get back into writing when I wrote “The Chronicles of Greg” at a Maggie Moo’s ice cream place. I wrote it with a Sharpie, on balloons…I’ll tell you more if you’d like. It’s a funny story.
January 30th, 2007 at 2:32 pm
Well, I actually wrote something the other day. Something that i didn’t hate. It was short, and I have 6 more parts to do…but that part is *done*.
January 30th, 2007 at 5:29 pm
Cody - Sounds like an interesting story indeed. Do go on.
Elisa - Congratulations! One step closer to the final product.