Thoughts On the Writing Life

I think upon the writing life often. I read so much, and on the authors I truly respect, I usually read anything they may have to say on the writing life. The life inside my head is a writer. The writing life and all the romance that phrase may imply, therefore, is fully contained inside of me. Yet I still entertain myself with the idea that all outward appearances are that I am living the writing life. I am taking this long trip to connect with myself and write the book I've been struggling with (the struggling is more with myself than the book). I know that the writing is already present within me, and it shall merely go where I go. But I honor the story and myself by bringing it into the world on my terms and on the road, like a bastard child born in a bed of a rolling truck escaping over the border. Those children often are the ones who change lives the most.

I consider everything (and I mean everything!) with the 'tale' eye in my mind. This 'tale' eye tries to see the story, first as it is, and then as it could or should be. Terry Brooks, in his book on his writing journey, Sometimes The Magic Works, states, "You will have to consider all the possible choices you can imagine in crucial situations and select the ones that seem best."

This struck me as the archetypical formula for living too. And as writers create an entire universe for their characters, they are god-like in that quality of creation and decision. Does God consider his choices and then do what seems right? According to the God of the Book (Judeo-Christian-Islamic), we are made in his image. So I often imagine that our capacity to make decisions based on what we know at the time the deciding is to be done, is much like His own. [Here, I end my moment of religion and philosophy, sorry 'bout that. It just popped up like a tree stump.]

Yes, I think planning and percolating a story idea is important. The form of an outline is completely variable, but it must be there somehow. The story must follow some form, but the form is flexible and allows for broad turns and deviations of the path described in an outline. Every element of a story can be changed, but the idea of the story must be held. Or you are telling a different story, no? For the story idea, the central theme, the core is the real story, not the appearance, the settings, the props, the actors within. Any form of Romeo and Juliet, no matter what, is about love between two people with outside factors pulling them apart. Sometimes, even the outside factor is internal to one or more of the characters in the story, such as illness, or talents, or belief structures. Even murderous and cruel jealousy is a form of love that is twisted by an outside factor of internal beliefs. What would be truly god-like, would be to be able to remove those factors, smooth it all out. But life would become bland and formless in that equation. So the author doesn't take them out, and sometimes adds more. The balance, the trick, if you will, is to not lose the idea of the story amidst the props. That is what I'm working on today. And hopefully winning that truck or getting some other vehicle so I can start my journey.

So dear reader, if you are writing your life, anew or just continuing the epic, do you find an outline helps you keep the idea of you? Post your replies if you dare.