The best laid plans... · 11:29pm May 23rd, 2021
"Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable." - Gen. Eisenhower
It seems that every time I start work on a story, no matter how meticulously I plan it out (or indeed how little I plan) or how well I think I know what the story is, by the time I reach the middle the story has taken on a life of its own and I find it going to places I had not before dreamed of.
In the worst cases, this has left me with an utterly broken story and a shattered will to fix it.
In the best cases, I have arrived at a completed story, albeit one littered with inconsistencies and missed opportunities.
Twilight Opens a Door has surprised me, though. Perhaps it's a result of the efforts I've made in developing my storycraft, or a quirk of the genre conventions I was playing with, or maybe a short story is just easier to keep hold of the reigns on, but when I sat down to write chapter 3 and discovered where it had taken me, I was pleased to realize it may yet conclude as not only a complete story, but one I have no regrets about at the end. And I intend to wrap it up by next weekend.
I have two more story ideas I want to write before I return to the salvage operation that is Mum's Diner, so we'll see in the coming months if I've actually figured something out.
