There is no greater excitement than starting a story. Finishing a story is satisfying, but in a different way – it’s a worn-out, bleary-eyed kind of happiness. You almost don’t even care. You don’t really remember the thrilling beginning, the new idea becoming a narrative with real, live characters.
Today I took myself and my laptop to a coffeeshop. I opened my Word doc called “Ideas and Beginnings” and picked something at random. I copied and pasted it into a blank document. And suddenly I had a story. I can’t even explain how it happened – and it would probably be boring if I tried – but suffice it to say I spent the next hour solidifying a story that had been in my brain for quite some time. It finally found something to stick to. Very exciting!
I will say, however, that naming characters will always be, for me, the very hardest part of writing.
I also discovered the Taddle Creek Archive and spent some time reading some amazing short stories. Here are some of my favourites:
My husband J and I were sitting on our bed in the dark, our dog snoring on her own little bed a few feet away. I was sitting with my chin on my drawn-up knees and trying to put into words why I’d had such a frustrating day. It was hard, partly because you can’t actually speak too well with your chin on your knees, but also because it’s so difficult to talk about writing, about that vague internal process Doris Lessing always referred to as “wool-gathering.”