Thursday, July 24, 2014

Day 25 - Why I love writing fiction

I love writing fiction.   My world, my rules. 

No interviewing, no struggling to get quotes right.  Not much of fact-checking.  If I cannot confirm a fact, or if I don't find enough information about something that I want to use in my story, I can leave it out altogether, or tweak the story into doing what I want it to do.

I can make my characters listen to me.  Though some of my characters have a tendency to take off in the middle and do what they want to, I can bring them around to do my bidding, if I so wish.

The story on paper always, always, looks blander than the way it sounded in my head.  So I love spending time on my drafts, working with words, sentences, changing them to reflect the moods and the colours in my head.  I revel in the feeling of accomplishment that comes to me when I get a sentence, a phrase - as right as I possibly can at that moment.

Sometimes, a story or a scene doesn't sound quite right.  And then I leave it, and come back to it after a week. Then it strikes me what I need to do to change it.  If that means chopping, and hacking my precious story to pieces, then so be it.  If it means sentencing it to the Recycle Bin, so be it.

But the high of satisfaction that comes from a story well-written is addictive.

And every time I send a story out and it gets accepted for publication, I go back to it and read it immediately, and feel a surge of pride about my story - but it is a kind of detached pride - as if the work was done by my story, not by me.  Good job, kid, I tell my story.  And sit back.

But each time a story sees the light of day, the big pile of incomplete, half-finished, skeletal, first-draft-languishing-in-folder stories seem  to acquire a demonic dimension - as if challenging me, saying, "Oh yeah?  You think you're good?  Let me see how you'll shake me up into a publishable story."  The challenge seems insurmountable.

And every time I'm flushed with the success of one of my stories, I come across, as if by serendipity, stories written by writers who are infinitely more skilled than I am.  And then I withdraw, tail between my legs, into my personal space where I feel inadequate and sorry for myself for a while - and I wonder why I even bother writing - until I feel better enough to feel inspired to reach the next level in my writing.

And then the whole cycle begins again.

2 comments:

austere said...

You DESERVE every bit of success that comes your way and more!
Just finished reading your DNA winner... what a dramatic tale!

Huge Congrats!

Shruthi said...

Thank you, Austere!

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