You Can't Get There from Here

I am currently writing a story for adults, and everything was going swimmingly until I was almost at the end of the story, but I didn't feel right about it.

This is usually when I go to a brainstorm document and just start talking to myself about the problem, the ideas for the solution and why they wouldn't work. That's when I realized that the reason my ending didn't feel right was because I hadn't set it up right.

In order for the ending to work, I had to plant these seeds earlier in the story, but I hadn't. That's probably why the story felt out of balance. I had building tension and things happening that needed to happen, but it wasn't enough. Although the story was good, the ending wasn't fitting because, basically, I couldn't get there from where I was.

I needed to go back to the beginning and start setting things up so that when this ending happened, it would totally make sense. Instead it was almost as if I had cheated and threw in something off the wall because I'm the writer, and I can do what I want.

Bottom line: the ending has to be set up from the beginning.

Growing a Story from a Seed

I was going to write this post about outlining a novel, but, as I am sitting here mulling it over, I realize I am thinking less about how to list things in the order in which you want them to occur and more about where ideas come from and how they evolve into a story. New writers or wannabe writers or people who can't even imagine writing often ask the question of authors: where do you get your ideas? The answers vary. Everywhere. Everything. Prayer and fasting. Magic.

Everything is Hard (or... Managing the Novel-Writing Project)

When it comes to writing, art, anything, I am notorious for biting off more than I can chew. It never fails that, at some point in every project, I am overwhelmed with the scale of the project and have doubts about being able to finish it.

For example, when I made decided to make a quilt for my daughter, like the idiot that I can sometimes be, I chose an intricate quilting pattern that would will take forever to finish.