Trusting The Voices In My Head

Well, hello there, my dear reader. It's been a few days, hasn't it, since last you and I spent any time together. I will not apologize for it, however; such is to be expected during the holidays. And for me, it has, indeed, been several holidays; my birthday, which is a day during which I have no shame about doing as little work as possible. And of course, Christmas, as well. I hope yours was good, if you're into that sort of thing.

Today, if you follow my Twitter feed, marks the first day that I've returned to work on my novel since originally declaring that it was "done" about two weeks ago, give or take a few days. Over the past week, I've contemplated and reflected and wondered and pondered, and all the while, the feeling grew; that I had made a mistake in deciding to write 'The End,' that the story was far from over. And after much deliberation, some of which was recorded here for your enjoyment, I decided to return to that work, to write until I was sure that the story was done. I don't know how far away the end is at this point. There's a lot left to tell, and maybe all that I have should be told in one book. Maybe not. For now, I'm just trusting the story to take me as far as it can.

Speaking of trust, that's the other thing I wanted to talk to you about tonight, well, really the main thing, to be honest. You see, after I wrote my chapter, I sat back in my chair and thought about the work I'd done. And to be honest, although I feel very glad that I've returned to the actual writing, part of me wondered if tonight's chapter was a mistake, if it perhaps represents a deviation in what the story is supposed to be.

See, writing is really a lot like juggling, or balancing on a tightrope, or some other tired trope about doing something that requires a lot of balancing and consideration. You want to tell the very best story that you can, but you also realize that the story is an organic thing; it's a thing that you may create, but you don't really own, because the story is its own thing, its own entity, with its own identity. You can choose to deny that identity, you can try to mold the story to your whims, but then you just get an abomination, an aborted "could-have-been" that represents only potential twisted into unkind shapes by an inflexible will. It's akin to treating marble like clay; you cannot mold your story into what you want it to be. It can only be what it is.

That means trusting the story when it goes to weird places. It means trusting the characters when they start to shift away from what you think they should be. It means sitting back and letting the organic process happen. It's a scary proposition, especially when you're a control freak, and most writers are, I think, at least, fiction writers are. We like to be God with our worlds, we like to think that everything happens according to our will. And when you suddenly find yourself writing something that, in retrospect, makes you stop and go "wait, what?" well, that's a bit scary.

Do you trust the characters and follow them down whatever road their voices lead you? Or do you decide that you know better, that you know sometimes emotions can lead to unsatisfying conclusions, that sometimes, creative chaos must be tempered and focused with discipline if it is to be forged into something meaningful. Do you let the character do something that might damage herself? Do you let her damage the story? Do you let her do something you don't agree with?

Do you even have a choice?

I don't know. I could always go back tomorrow and delete what I wrote tonight. I could decide tomorrow that what happened in tonight's session was the product not of my character voices, but of my own mood, my own tired state, or whatever other excuse. I could say that my characters don't know what "jumping the shark" means, that if I let them have their way, they could very well abort the story. After all, these are my characters, my children, in a sense. And a responsible parent doesn't let his children raise themselves, does he? Or she? No, you provide guidance, gently steering them down the "right path" even as you try to give them the freedom to develop into the beings that they are meant to be.

So what do I do?

No idea. I just wanted to share with you what's going through my head, and possibly glean some insight as I did. In this case, I think, the best course is ultimately to let the story grow in whatever direction the voices take me. It's quite honestly the most insane option, choosing to listen to the voices rather than my own sense of what is and what should be, but I've long believed that creativity and madness are really not so different. Being creative means taking risks that aren't sound, aren't sensible. Being creative means doing insane things like letting your children raise themselves, even though that has the potential to be dangerous.

After all, if it wasn't dangerous, it wouldn't really be worth doing. Not this way, at least.