Writing...the journey that leads...

“Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.” - E. L. Doctorow

Just where does your writing journey begin and where does it end? Just where does all this lead? We sit at our desktop's typing out our words, spilling them onto paper, night after night, taking our character(s) on what seems an endless leg of walking only to find, it has to end somewhere right?

We writer’s are on the same journey as our characters. We flow like the stream, happenstance, like our plot, is built up to the point of high voltage, then we drop the bomb of conclusion and fall victim to an end.

Do any of you find that when you end your story, you find yourself sad because you had come alive via your characters and now they have come to a conclusion, and you wonder, where to next? We know we’re going to let it sit, for at least seven days before we pick it back up and go through scrutinizing and editing the piece, right?

If we’re lucky we might have a sequel to squelch the need to write or a story that preys on our mind until we have to get it out. Ever had a journey like that? If I didn’t have writing to get things off of my mind, or fictional worlds in which to climb, my life would be unbearably exhausting and insanity would ensue.

That’s what our writing needs to do. Build a world of insanity where we can plot, structure, form and mend all of our inner problems onto the paper of falseness. I say falseness because we’re not going to give our character a reality as close to our own now are we? 

The Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa has won the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature. The Swedish Academy said that it was honoring the 74-year-old author "for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt and defeat." ~The New York Times, 10/7/10

Through our writing we are allowed to give, shape and color our worlds. We are our character's god. We hold the pen of creation in our hand.  Did you read the above about the Nobel in Literature? ...structures of power and his trenchant images! Now THAT’S what I’m talking about. Images that brings your writing alive. Structure that shapes and forms into something believable. An entire world within your grasp.

Oh feel the power! Feel the pen! Release the artist within!