Flexibility

I've been doing a good amount of work on Guardians for the past few weeks. Unfortunately, most of my efforts have not actually made it to the computer yet and are still firmly stuck in my notebook. The reason is, that there are some holes in my plot right now that I am trying desperately to fix. It's pretty frustrating because I can't actually write the story right now until my mind feels comfortable with the plot and where the story is going. However, I'm also really enjoying the experience. It's not a ton of fun or anything, a lot of it is rereading what I've written and looking at my outlines, and trying to stay consistent, which is can get repetitive. No, what I'm so happy about is that I have the ability to go back and change the plot. When I've tried to write stories before I've outlined everything and essentially gotten locked into a plot sequence before I've even begun to write. This time, I realized that I needed to be more flexible and so I didn't outline the entire story before I began. I did A LOT of brainstorming, and outlined the first half. Then I wrote and wrote and wrote, did some plot-tweaking, and wrote some more.

Now that I'm halfway through the plot I realized that I had used up my outline. So I did have to go back and outline the second half. But almost as soon as I began writing I found the holes. I mean, they were so big I could see right through them (Bad joke, I know. I couldn't resist.) But really, the holes were frustrating me and I literally could not write until I fixed them. So I did and now I can write again.

SO, the point of this ridiculously long tangent is that I have come to the conclusion that writers need to be flexible. They have to understand that the plot, the characters, or their own random brainstorms may take them a different way than they initially thought. I'm not usually that flexible but in this case, I think that giving into the story is the best thing a writer can do. Because being inflexible is basically another way to say that the writer is blocking their creative juices. And who wants to read something that lacks creativity? Not me, that's for sure. And I want to write something that lacks creativity even less.