[rambling/SoC] Sometimes the muse whispers · 10:36pm Mar 3rd, 2021
...and sometimes she yells.
After two years of mostly nothing coming out of my fingers, I've finally been graced with a monsoon of inspiration for Mum's Diner.
I had been toying with the idea of a sequel to Sweet Nothings for a long time, but never really had much of an idea what it would be. I did write up one scene in another blog post (you can go digging for it if you really want), but it never amounted to anything. So when I did start Mum's Diner, it was just an exercise--something to get my fingers moving again. I abandoned any pretense of a plan or goal and just wrote whatever felt right in the moment. Each chapter written so far (9 as of the writing of this blog) was done in basically one sitting, and I ended each chapter when I felt I had said all there was to say in the scene.
I've heard complaints about short chapters, but such a thing is absurd. Sure, I could pad a chapter out with flowery descriptions, and it would probably improve the story in at least some places, but I already knew that the first several thousand words I wrote would amount to only the first act of the story. All I wanted to do was get some ideas onto the page and string them together in something at least vaguely coherent. Exposition is not a cancer of storytelling, it is a tool. It can be used expertly as a scalpel or poorly as a cudgel, but if the latter gets the story moving, then get the damn thing moving. "Show don't tell" is all well and good, but an author's instinct is to show the things he cares about, and tell the things he doesn't. I feel confident that more of the words I've written so far have been about things I care about than the things I don't.
Parsimony is a way of life for me.
When I was working on Sweet Nothings, I planned extensively. When I was writing, however, the story took on a life of its own. The final product, as it appears here on FimFic or even in the original FoE version still floating around in gdocs, ended up bearing little resemblance to those plans. I had to write the story before I could discover what it was about. It was a great tragedy that so much of what I had planned to do ended up being abandoned. I revisited that tragedy a few weeks ago by digging up my original notes doc. It was initially out of a desire to find something I couldn't remember (and it wasn't even in the notes), but quickly became a nostalgic reverie as I read over all the lost characters, plots, and ideas.
It was also painful to read the comments left by the two friends I had helping me develop the story at the time, as they're no longer part of my life. My past self wasn't able to fully appreciate everything they offered, and I deeply regret the loss of what might have been. Were I able to quantum leap into my younger self...
Oh boy.
So I wrote Mum's Diner with the expectation that as long as I understand who my characters are and what themes are important to me, the story would eventually reveal itself to me. Now, 9k words in, it has. They're certainly not the best 9k words I could have written, but the death of so many things I've tried to write over the years has been an obsession with fixing the early chapters, so they shall remain as-is.
The best way forward is the good plan you stick to, not the perfect plan you don't.[citation needed]
The past couple weeks have been a rush. What had been a few scattered and vague notions of things I wanted to write about have coalesced into an outline with multiple overlapping character arcs, world-building, and a stack of books on storytelling that just arrived today. I'm already working on writing the next 2-3 chapters, and am very pleased with how they're shaping up. Act one will be finished within a few months, and I already have most of Act 2 blocked out.
I don't want to risk setting goals for myself I don't know if I can stick to, so updates to the story will come whenever they come. But I have managed once a month for the past 3 chapters and I feel confident that I can get at least 2 more chapters up in the next several weeks. Beyond that is the horizon. But I may take to writing blogs more frequently, as it helps me organize my thoughts and tidy up the clutter in my head that would otherwise pose a trip hazard.
