Today's been a big day for me writingwise. I did have a couple of interruptions that kept me from reaching my wordcount potential as quickly as I would have liked, but I came out of my brief first stage of doubt today.
I was wondering last night what it is that I'm doing with this particular work in progress. I don't know exactly where my plot is going or how all of the scenes connect. I've got some major issues that seemed to be standing in the way of my moving forward and completing a manuscript. But everything changed during this morning's workout.
One day this summer I was shopping at Walmart. As I wandered around the racks of clothes, my mind wandered too. So I started to daydream. And in this daydream, I had this vision of a young girl, a sad violinist. I didn't know who she was or what she did. I only knew that her life made her so, so sad and that she would turn to music making to comfort herself. Sometimes she'd play low minor chords that coincided with the way she was viewing the world, expressing her emotions in a way that made sense to her. Other times she'd play upbeat tunes that cheered her up and prepared her to move forward. I didn't know what I was doing, daydreaming about her. I imagined that I'd forget about the sad violinist and keep going.
This morning while I was walking on the treadmill, it hit me. That sad violinist. She's in my story.
I hadn't recognized her at first because I didn't know up until that moment that the girl in my book even played music. But it just clicked, and it worked so well. She's the main character's sister and I had no idea that I'd seen her months before while I was drifting through Walmart.
When I got back to my writing, things began to work together. Tiffany, the violinist, started to share her voice with me. The scenes that I wrote from her point of view all of a sudden had a different feel to them than the other scenes. When she tells a story, I can feel her poetic, musical side. I can feel the nerdiness. I can feel the profound sadness. The words just started to flow together as she took over and showed me what it was she wanted to say.
Once her voice had become clear, her sister's voice started to develop. Their mother's voice is coming along nicely as well. The POVs that I'd been switching between were suddenly different from each other. They don't run together anymore. I don't have to scroll backward up the page to see who's talking because I'm learning to recognize them by their individual voices, which, though they sometimes resemble each other, are distinct and unique.
After their voices came a ton of other things. Details about Tiffany and Delta's childhood. Scenes that depict the delicate relationships in their household. Funny, happy scenes. Scenes of anger and pain. There's just this wonderful flow of content coming, and it all started back in June at Walmart.
--Britni M
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