Story Tetris

This is my last post as a Pacific Northwesterner. By this time next week, I will have relocated to Florida. As you can see, Hatshepsut is very keen on 'helping' with the packing. We're almost done and the moving truck is filling up. I am so tired.

Packing a moving truck is an art. Think Truck Tetris. Or huge, fragile jigsaw puzzle. It's very much like putting a book together. Every book has scenes and characters and arcs. Motivations and conflicts. Those come in varying sizes and weights. The ones I can't lift have to act as the anchors to all the other bits and pieces. As the biggest, heaviest segments settle into place in a story, I have to juggle the smaller ones, slotting them into the perfect place for them. In a moving truck, I do that so the load doesn't shift and break everything. I guess stories work the same way. The pieces interlock. They prop one another up and keep the structure from collapsing under its own weight.


I wish I could talk about whether or not I'm tempted to cave to fan pressure about how a story goes down. But I'm honestly not in that position. I've had a grand total of one, count 'em one, protest about how one of my books ended. And at that point, the book was in print. So it wasn't as if I had an option to change that one to suit the reader. Would I if I had readers beating down my doors over a story?

Probably not. I cannot rearrange a story - shift boxes around - without risking the whole thing collapsing and breaking. That plot twist readers hate is, for me, the ONLY thing that will fit in just that spot in the story. It supports and props up the rest of the stuff that gets piled atop it. But hey. Never say never, right? Who knows what I'll do when faced with a mob of annoyed readers brandishing torches?

Where I DO bow to reader demand right now, though, is in what book to write when. Well. Kinda. I've had a number of readers after me for the conclusion of one of the series I write. Not that I didn't WANT to write it - but eh the rights are mine again and here we go.

So. Sunnier climes ho. When someone yells at me in protest over a plot point, I'll let you know whether I cave or fight back. In the meantime, break out the sunscreen and shades. We're palm tree bound.

Making Space

Have you ever wanted something badly enough to change your habits to get or achieve it? Did you say to yourself that you needed to make space in your life for the effort required to achieve your goal? Maybe it was making the baseball team and what you needed was to make space for dedicated practice every day. Only that way could you develop the skill needed to make a team.

Have you paid any attention to some of the New Age-y philosophies about 'making room' for something in your life? There's the story about the woman who decided she was ready for a committed relationship, but no prospects appeared. She finally realizes she hasn't made room for a partner. Therefore, she cleans out her closet so half is empty. She clears the second bay of the garage. Presto. Because she'd made physical space, she'd made psychic space, and put herself into the frame of mind to see possibilities she hadn't before. The natural cynic in me nods and says, 'how neat, tidy and accommodating.'

Regardless, both stories point out a single fact: Space is predicated on loss.

If you need space, you have to lose something you currently have or do or are in order to have what you believe you want. In the case of the wannabe baseball player, the loss is after school TV and games with friends. In the case of the relationship, it's the loss of physical space, yes, but it's a larger psychological shift - it's a case of reframing one's identity as an individual to someone who is part of a pair.

If you require further proof, think back to a time you'd lost someone. Tell me you didn't exit a funeral home or leave the gravesite with a sense of vast emptiness. There's that space we were looking for. Granted. It doesn't always require a human or animal sacrifice. Sometimes a job loss, or getting dumped, or losing a place to live suffices. Once the panic subsides, a kind of numbness sets in that somehow stretches time and you're staring over the rim of the Grand Time (and Space) Canyon.

This is where I am. I always want more space for writing - and for dedicated mental/emotional energy to apply thereto, but that's another blog rant. I've had a specific vision for how that would work. Turquoise water, a beach, and a writing desk that looks over it all. While that pretty vision isn't assured, we are moving across the continent. From Seattle to Tampa, Florida. It's time to sail warm water.  To make the space for all of this to happen, we had to lose our home and our eldest feline. We had to lose a ton of assumptions about ourselves, too. Like a friend said, we defined Pacific Northwest. But you know, the moss has grown thick enough, I think. Time to redefine ourselves. I have no idea what the definition will be - but it will involve writing, another boat, cats, and the ocean. Always the cats and the ocean.

So what do I need to make space for? Nothing. The space is made. I'm wallowing in it. Now it's time to execute.