Most of what a writer writes is what happens along the way. The destination of a story isn't the most important part. The most important part is the journey we ourselves go on through the development of our characters. As we write our characters we make adjustments. We grow wiser about our character’s limitations and their strengths. We create their challenges as we work through our own.
Learning to enjoy the journey is the foundation for this writer’s life. If all I think about is the finished manuscript then I never finish developing the characters that I have recreated from within me. In the past I never could settle my mind to look at and develop the scenery of my own story. I could never stand still and take in the events of my character’s life or my life as it happened. I was always at my destination never knowing how I got there. This is why I have a drawer filled with unfinished manuscripts.
Robert Bly wrote “Two birds fly past. They are needed somewhere.” As writers what we write touches thousands of people’s souls, they bring us into their lives and we help them explore their sufferings because we recreate our own sufferings in our characters. Readers identify with the characters we have recreated from ourselves. We become a part of each other writer and reader.
Every experience I write makes me a part of my reader’s world. I’m not the only kindergartener who noticed the fresh wood scent a sharpened red cedar No.2 gives off and I am not the only adult thinking about and feeling what that shaved wood smell did to me as a child and still does to me as an adult. Everything I write is necessary for someone, not everyone, just someone. I am a part of a larger world than the one that exists within me.
When I only focus on the destination of my writing I am unable to complete and develop my journey and the journey of my characters to self-discovery. My words are like the birds they are needed somewhere by someone. Every word I write is as important as the next. What makes one sentence more important than the next is the direction my individual words give the reader as I lead them down the path to our final destination. Individual words don’t carry the same burden as a sentence; they never have and they never will.
I learn from everything, every word I write, every sentence I construct. What I do with and how I share that self-knowledge is my journey, my story. As a writer I am what and who I create as I strive to reach my final destination, my finished project, my completed manuscript, my journey of self-discovery.
Learning to enjoy the journey is the foundation for this writer’s life. If all I think about is the finished manuscript then I never finish developing the characters that I have recreated from within me. In the past I never could settle my mind to look at and develop the scenery of my own story. I could never stand still and take in the events of my character’s life or my life as it happened. I was always at my destination never knowing how I got there. This is why I have a drawer filled with unfinished manuscripts.
Robert Bly wrote “Two birds fly past. They are needed somewhere.” As writers what we write touches thousands of people’s souls, they bring us into their lives and we help them explore their sufferings because we recreate our own sufferings in our characters. Readers identify with the characters we have recreated from ourselves. We become a part of each other writer and reader.
Every experience I write makes me a part of my reader’s world. I’m not the only kindergartener who noticed the fresh wood scent a sharpened red cedar No.2 gives off and I am not the only adult thinking about and feeling what that shaved wood smell did to me as a child and still does to me as an adult. Everything I write is necessary for someone, not everyone, just someone. I am a part of a larger world than the one that exists within me.
When I only focus on the destination of my writing I am unable to complete and develop my journey and the journey of my characters to self-discovery. My words are like the birds they are needed somewhere by someone. Every word I write is as important as the next. What makes one sentence more important than the next is the direction my individual words give the reader as I lead them down the path to our final destination. Individual words don’t carry the same burden as a sentence; they never have and they never will.
I learn from everything, every word I write, every sentence I construct. What I do with and how I share that self-knowledge is my journey, my story. As a writer I am what and who I create as I strive to reach my final destination, my finished project, my completed manuscript, my journey of self-discovery.
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