Wednesday, December 16, 2009

If You Give A Book A Gremlin . . .

. . . it will acquire a mind of its own to go with it.

Seriously. Once you give in to this organic thing, all hell breaks loose. Mysterious elements show up out of seemingly (key word, that) nowhere, characters take on a mind of their own and refuse, refuse, to do what you’ve told them to. The bad guy decides he’s not the bad guy any longer and strange interpersonal dynamics and heretofore unsuspected relationships that you have given no conscious thought to, begin appearing on the page.

Have I mentioned lately how much I love my job? ☺

The thing is, this is one of the reasons people give for not wanting to outline--a fear of stifling just this phenomenon, and I totally get that; that's their process and choice. For me though, I don't know how to get moving on the page without some sort of outline or plot and it is only when I am actively moving on the page that these sorts of spontaneous things begin happening.

I read somewhere, and I can't for the life of me remember where (Katy, you might know the source of this idea) that the reason music became part of religious ritual was because the monks believed it created a space through which the Divine could enter.

Maybe for some of us outlines are like that. Creating an outline is like playing the music that will allow the Creative Spark to ignite...

4 comments:

Katy Cooper said...

"Katy, you might know the source of this idea"

I don’t, but it's a cool one. One of the things I love about a Catholic Mass is that it seems to create a bowl to contain holiness, to concentrate it so its power can be strongly felt.

I need to think about this some more -- it feels like one of those thoughts -- but I have this half-formed idea that the universe requires us to balance order and chaos, and to the degree we create order, we have to allow chaos. So, an outline and surprises. (Everyone I know who outlines makes room for surprises. Everyone.)

I'm a control freak who, I believe, runs a serious risk of choking the life out of her work by trying to contain it in some fashion. So I've been working on turning left every time the controlling part says "turn right," to do the crazy scary thing and see where it leads me. To walk toward the mess and away from order.

I also need to think about this in relation to the idea that the plot is the vehicle that carries and illuminates the actual story...

Robin L said...

Yes, yes, yes on the creating a bowl to contain holiness!

And hmm...maybe the plot creates the bowl that contains and illuminates the real story.

Lia Keyes said...

Love your description of this process and how one method helps the other and neither should be excluded from the process! And I also love your blog's look - your books look even more gorgeous with this backdrop to set them off. :)

Robin L said...

Hi Lia!

Great to see you here! I love the blog template, too, and am considering adapting it for my official website. :-)