Sometimes you just can’t get your head to make any sense.
My biggest frustration lately has been trying to fill in the details and back story of my novel, which was taken from a script I did, which was based on a short story I wrote (many, many) years ago. So there’s not a lot there beyond the bare bones of the story and the skeleton forms of the characters that I’ve worked with in the many years this thing has been rattling around inside that dark place known as my mind. Short stories and scripts are unique and different writing forms unto themselves, neither of which I’m very good at. I have always been better at prose writing, the novel length primarily. At least, that’s what I thought until I started this latest project.
It seems that once I’ve programmed myself to think of something in a particular way, it’s really hard to reprogram me. Probably true of most humans, I suppose, but I didn’t expect to have such a challenge with this. In the deep, dark recesses somewhere, I know where my characters come from, why they’re in the situation they are in, how they came to be the way they are, but when it came time to put that onto the page, the words failed me. I mean, I had words, but they didn’t convey what I wanted. Or they didn’t make sense in the overall story line. Or they were just crappy.
In an effort to break through to the heart of the story and get it in print, I started some visualization exercises. I began by trying them at the desk while the keyboard was ready for the grand input. Blank. So then I decided to try them while I was in those few minutes (hours, days, it seems, sometimes) before I fell asleep in bed. My mind tends to run wild then anyway, so I figured I could harness some of that energy and come out of it with something useful.
It went something like this:
Gotta come up with the back story. How did my lead character get into this mess? Where did the injuries come from? Do they have anything to do with what happens next, or are they just the reason to abandon the road and head home? What does the butterfly have to do with anything? Is this just one of those Freudian visions that speaks of a child hood abandoned too soon, or is it just a neat visual? Maybe it has something to do with the dad? Damn cat, get off my head. Or could it be something that was done during college? If there’s military history, it could mean a connection to something that the government wants covered up. But really, the character is what the government wants to cover up, so how do we make sure that comes out? Was it a frame job? Did the explosion really happen because of a terrorist group, or was it just something they did to try and bring our hero down? Jeez, they can probably see his snoring on the Richter scale at CalPoly. Then why does the other guy show up? How does that all tie in to his connection to the super soldiers, and should it come out that’s what it’s all about? OWowow! Leg cramp! Pull the toes back. Pull the toes back! But then why kill the father? Is the CEO really nuts, or is he just suicidal? Is there really a difference? Boy, it’d be nice to get Brandon Routh to play that part in the movie. I wonder if they’d let me on the set, because I think I left the light on in the bathroom but it doesn’t matter ‘cause somebody’ll be up eventually to make that run to the store for the crap I forgot yesterday yesterday was a nice song by the Beatles which reminds me I gotta kill those bastards in the pantry before they get into the back seat of the truck which I should describe better in the introduction scene before they take the lawyer back to his condo on the lake shore where the boats are landing like in Saving Private Ryan man they really got the sound right on that one doesn’t look right it’sthefrakkingzombiesagainwhere’smydamnsword???
Amazingly enough, out of all that did come a good resolution to my conundrum and I’m happily back filling in the blanks of my novel. Scary how the mind works, isn’t it?
© 2010 Cheri K. Endsley. All Rights Reserved.
Musings of a Madwoman 