Books, like life, can be rather unpredictable sometimes, where even the best laid plans or most detailed outlines can't always dictate how a story will begin or end. Today's guest blogger, Michelle Zink --- author of PROPHECY OF THE SISTERS --- proves that this isn't necessarily a bad thing, and gives us a peek into her own unique and organic writing process, which allows her stories to take on lives of their own.
There was a time, back when I was a teenager, that I wanted to be a writer. Of course, there was a time when I also wanted to be a lawyer and an actress and, at one point, even the first woman president of the United States. I also wanted to travel to Egypt, go on Safari, live in Paris, see the world, get married, have children, live dangerously, skydive.
I suppose you could call them outlines of a sort, though they were ever-changing and never seemed to last for long. I was a strange sort of paradox --- the ultimate planner who was willing (happy even!) to let things happen and revel in the surprises of life.
Which is why it should probably come as no surprise that as a writer (for the record, I reached that benchmark much later than expected), I hate outlines.
For a long time, I thought something was wrong with me. I listened as other writers shared detailed outline processes and their procedures for color coding spreadsheets to insure that plot threads were all concluded. I listened and felt like a fraud, because the truth is, I just write. I just write as the words came to me --- though always with a general direction and an ending loosely plotted in my mind --- and then I go back when I’m done and fix anything that just feels... wrong.
I tried writing with an outline once in an effort to make myself feel more legitimate, but it just didn’t work for me. I’d have to work back and forth between my outline and the book I was working on, trying to keep my creative flow as I went, and at the end of the day I’d be left with a bunch of words that made perfect sense but had no magic. Worse, I hated it. I hated staying within the confines of an outline I’d written before I’d gotten to know my characters. Before I could hear their voices in my heads. I hated feeling like I was writing an essay instead of telling a story.
So I stopped. I went back to my... organic way of writing and hoped for the best.
I work that way to this day, starting with a general idea where the story is going and one page (if I’m lucky and actually have that much to start with) of miscellaneous notes on characters' names, appearances, and other random details that seem to appear out of the mist when I’m in the early, obsessive days of an idea. By the time I write the last line, the story is often very different from how I imagined it in the beginning. Somewhere along the way, the story just takes on a life of its own. It goes its own way, and the truth is, I kind of like it that way.
I guess life is much the same way. I never became a lawyer or President of the United States. I still haven’t been to Egypt or lived in Paris (I still hope to do both someday), though I did get married and have children --- with quite a few bumps along the way. But I’ve lived like a gypsy all over the United States, sometimes picking up and moving on a moment’s notice. I’ve worked in computers, sold antiques, taken care of other people’s children and stayed home to take care of my own. I’ve renovated a house, driven across country, and studied subjects far and wide. I’ve raised children who are artists, musicians, baseball players, and yes, perhaps even writers.
Really, nothing is exactly as I’ve planned in any of my outlines, literary or otherwise. Shadows of my original hopes and dreams lurk in the corners of those I have realized just as I hear echoes of my original story ideas in my finished books.
Best of all, there is still room for the unrealized. For the promise of things yet imagined and hoped for both in life and literature. Every day holds magic, because I’m never quite sure what will happen.
And I’ve finally figured out that for me, all the magic is in not knowing.
-- Michelle Zink
