“You cannot fill in the vision. You cannot even bring the vision to light. You are wrong if you think that you can in any way take the vision and tame it to the page. The page is jealous and tyrannical; the page is made of time and matter; the page always wins. The vision is not so much destroyed, exactly, as it is, by the time you have finished, forgotten. It has been replaced by this changeling, this bastard, this opaque lightless chunky ruinous work."
I very much enjoyed reading this post. It was insightful and intriguing. I've written several books, constructing a rough story line and arc, developing characters, etc. but it invariably changes in the midst of actual writing the story. Sometimes it's a character's personality, sometimes it a veer in the plot and other times, even a change in settings. As you mentioned, during those times its best to let the story tell you where to go with it. Anyway, glad I found your site and nice to meet you. Oh, and I completely agree with your thinking that nothing is perfect. - Jim
Thank you so much for your kind words and thoughts on this post! It's so nice to meet you as well. I'm happy to hear that someone else had a similar experience with the story taking its own turns. It's such an interesting piece of the creative journey.
Hello Megan,
I very much enjoyed reading this post. It was insightful and intriguing. I've written several books, constructing a rough story line and arc, developing characters, etc. but it invariably changes in the midst of actual writing the story. Sometimes it's a character's personality, sometimes it a veer in the plot and other times, even a change in settings. As you mentioned, during those times its best to let the story tell you where to go with it. Anyway, glad I found your site and nice to meet you. Oh, and I completely agree with your thinking that nothing is perfect. - Jim
Hello Jim,
Thank you so much for your kind words and thoughts on this post! It's so nice to meet you as well. I'm happy to hear that someone else had a similar experience with the story taking its own turns. It's such an interesting piece of the creative journey.
Love this post, Meg!!