Creating a Story

I have been working on my book feverishly lately, and though it's taking me longer to finish the second draft than I'd anticipated, things are really coming together.  I've been thinking a lot lately about the creative process of writing- the way plot, motivation, characters, setting, mood, and so many other elements blend in a mystifying way.  It's a complicated process, and one I'm sure I'll spend the rest of my life trying to comprehend.  For though the story comes easily to me, the writing often does not.

There's a great description of writing my Mardi McConnochie that sums up perfectly the way I often feel:

"There is something tremendously exciting about this imaginary journey; for while the words remain unwritten, the idea in your head is perfect, pristine, an object whose apparent harmony of form disguises the technical mastery which lies beneath.  Once you begin, the whole thing starts to collapse, like that tower in Pisa which began tilting even as it was being constructed.  What was melodious, simple, and beautiful in the abstract is painfully disappointing in practice... what you end up with is always an approximation of the thing you originally envisaged.  But even so, there are moments where the prose sings and you know you've done something remarkable, and I suppose that's why you keep going."

As a writer, I live for those "moments," when events harmonize and converge, when life is breathed into a scene, when the right words trickle down through my fingers and onto the page.