Friday, April 6, 2018

What Not to Ask Me

So you know how you make some random blanket statement that your life is an open book and you have nothing to hide? And then, inevitably, out of nowhere, someone tosses out a question that makes you recoil while certain nether regions pucker?

Yeah. Who'd have thought something so innocent as 'how do you plan' would be my hill to die upon?

To make a long story short: Not answering the planning question.

Oh.

You're still here. Uhm. Okay. I, uh, look. How about why I don't like chatting about plans? It's superstition. I like to keep my plans, like my poker cards, close to my vest. Not that I play poker well. It's just that in any creative endeavor, I feel like the energy of beginning is fragile and easily dissipated. So I don't talk about my plans (for fiction or drawings or paintings or photography) with anyone. Not even crit partners. Once projects are well underway, they seem to withstand being discussed and dissected. At the point that I have the legs assembled and the brain and heart of a story plugged in, the skeleton can handle all kinds of challenges being tossed at it. Until then, I'm super susceptible to being utterly derailed by someone saying, "this bit here doesn't make sense." Stupid but true.

Do I wish my brain worked differently around this? You betcha. Instead, I have to be the weird little muppet in a Jim Henson skit who gasps and vanishes into her hole, pulling a rock in after her. Here. Have a cat.


4 comments:

  1. I like how Hatshepsut's expression very clearly conveys the "back away from my secrets." :D

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    1. She should have been born a slinky teenager with a major modeling contract. This girl knows how to work a camera.

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  2. I totally get this. It hurt my brain to have to come up with mini-synopses of the second and third books in the series when the first one sold. And then I think I went way off the rails, but most of that was needing *not* to know everything about the book when I started it. If you speak the word (or plot), it loses its magic!

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    1. Right there with you. If I know all the things about a story, why the hell should I write it?? That may be part of my reticence. Also. Planning suggests I actually know where I'm going.

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