Why is it so hard to follow where the story takes me?

Musings as we enter March on fiction, fecklessness, and foolish youth-- plus a few personal updates and links.

Photo by Artem Sapegin on Unsplash

Once upon a time, I was a pantser.

Oh, it’s not what you’re thinking. Believe me. Any reference to “once upon a time” as it relates to my own life has no salacious undertones; I had an extremely sheltered, conservative upbringing. I didn’t even WEAR pants (skirts only!) until I was in my 20s, which is another story for another day. When I say “pantser,” I’m referring to being a seat-of-the-pants writer, as my sister and I used the term in our teenage blogging years.

No, I will not be linking to my teenage blog. It’s still out there if you look hard enough, but you have to know where to look, and I am not going to help you. 

My sister was the opposite: a dedicated outliner. She still is, as a matter of fact. When she plots out a story, she meticulously plans and sub-plans, covers and recovers each detail of the beautiful embroidery that will eventually be a captivating story. (When the novel she just finished gets published– as I firmly believe it will– you best believe I’ll be shouting where to buy it from the rooftops. She’s such a good writer, you guys. It’s ridiculous and unfair that after working much harder than I do at this craft, she’s so much better at it. Ugh, it’s like dedication is its own reward or something.) 

I, though? I wrote by the seat of my pants. I took an idea, or more accurately a premise, sketched some characters, and leapt in with both feet. (The metaphorical pants didn’t go on one leg at a time.) When I was 17, I wrote a 120,000-word historical novel and I reveled in every second of it. (I won’t be sharing any kind of access to that, either. See above.) 

I’m not going to pretend that what I wrote as a teenager, when I dove headfirst into stories with wild abandon, was anything resembling Great Literature. I mean, I’m not going to pretend what I write now is Great Literature. My plotting was weak, my characters hackneyed, and my dialogue tried way too hard to resemble Jane Austen and succeeded mostly in sounding like a low-budget bonnet drama. 

But my gosh, it was so much fun.

I miss the days when I used to completely lose myself in a story of my own making. The practice goes back a lot farther than my high school historical fiction forays. I actually can’t remember a time when I wasn’t making up my own stories. I have scattered memories of pacing our back patio in South Carolina (where we lived when I was four, five, and a little bit of six) and dreaming up new adventures in the Hundred-Acre Wood where I was Christopher Robin’s twin sister and Winnie the Pooh’s world had expanded to include me. 

Once upon a time, elaborate once-upon-a-times lived rent-free in my head. Just for me. On long car trips, during walks (in the days before I had an iPod, lol), on the swing set in our rural Pennsylvania backyard (in the days after I turned six) and in the upper bunk bed facing my sister’s fellow upper bunk (in the days when all four of us shared one bedroom), characters and scenery and self-insert melodrama danced like visions of sugarplums… in the days when I imagined sugarplums to be an incredibly decadent Christmas treat that combined fresh fruit and crystallized sugar into something with much more scope for the imagination than the boring reality of the actual old-timey candy.

In those days, I set no standards for myself. My stories were whimsical and ridiculous: the adventures overblown, the romance full of cheesy naivete, the dialogue unrealistic. All things I for which I would chastise myself today, and which indeed often keep me from committing anything to the page. 

I’m really not sure where the disconnect happened.

Maybe it came about when I graduated high school and began climbing toward the adult world, when working hours replaced daydreaming afternoons, when learning Quickbooks crowded out imagining my own books in my head. The human brain can only hold so much. Community college took a great deal of my headspace, and dating and then becoming engaged to the man who is now my husband relegated much of my self-spun romance to the wayside. 

I don’t regret the different turns my life took from where I thought I’d be when I was a teenager dreaming of my future. But I do wonder when my story-spark got lost, and when I started looking so critically at the stories I’d made up, and only allowing myself into the safety-netted bounds of stories about my real life. 

These days, I find myself wishing I could get back into that blissful kind of writing mode. A blank page now sets my nervous teeth on edge unless I have a ready-made outline to work from, but there was once a time when it represented limitless possibility and a thrilling unfolding of… well, anything! No structure needed– I always assumed the story would just come to me. Back then, I cared so much less about what other people thought (because no one else was reading my stories!) and that freedom allowed me to create without fear of rejection. As I’ve grown older and maybe a little wiser and definitely more cautious, I’ve lost that uninhibited access to the realm of imagination. I love writing about things that are true, don’t get me wrong. But I want to reconnect with my fancy-free fiction side again, too. 

Have you found it harder to write stories without constantly second-guessing yourself, as an adult? I’d love to hear about how you’ve overcome that reticence, or if you (like me) are still chipping away at it.

***

Now for a few more personal notes.

You may have noticed that I didn’t send out a newsletter in February. Part of this is because I only had one article from January to share with you, but a much bigger part was because my beloved maternal grandmother passed away on February 1st, somewhat suddenly. I was in no mood to write at the time, so I just let Substack slide for a little while. It didn’t seem necessary to make an excuse at the moment, and I’m sure you’ll understand now.

When I first began writing this newsletter, my grandmom was one of the first people to sign up. I’m both saddened and somehow weirdly encouraged to know that this email, when it goes out on March 4th, will still land in her inbox even though she is not there to check it. I have no intention of removing her email address from my subscriber list. Knowing that she was there cheering me on from the beginning, even if she will not see my writing career through to the end, is heartening. I want to make her proud. I know she was proud. 

I have many more things I’d like to write about her, and I’m not ready to put them all together yet. That time will come. My mom wrote a beautiful eulogy that she read at the funeral that that encompassed so much of what my grandmother was to so many people: loving, supportive, generous, and loyal. I have words of my own I’d like to write eventually but I can’t improve on what my mom had to say; I can only try to complement it as best I can. But I’m not ready to do that just yet.

For now, here are some links to what I did write in the past couple of months.

In January, I wrote…

Understanding Corporate Employee Jargon (For Bosses!) in The Belladonna Comedy

Then in February, I wrote…

I’m an Actual Toddler and Here Are My Top Twelve Toddler Activity Ideas in Frazzled

Off-the-Beaten-Track Tips for Battling Morning Sickness (this was self-published on Medium as it wasn’t a great fit for the women’s health publication I originally submitted to, and I figured I may as well post it as not. Maybe it will help someone! At almost 32 weeks pregnant, I’m very grateful to be past the initial nausea phase, but of course I’m now enjoying a whole host of other lovely symptoms that accompany the third trimester. Ugh. The end of April cannot come too quickly!)

As we move into March, I have at least one new piece on the brink of publication, and it’s a humorous one again. On the surface I suppose it seems odd that in a time of fatigue and grief, the majority of what I’m writing is an attempt to be funny. But while there are plenty of things I want to write that are thoughtful and true (that personal eulogy to remember my grandmother is one of them), the things that are funny are helping me to still feel connected to the good and the happy parts of my life. Especially when that humor makes me thankful for my kids (those born, and currently wreaking havoc on my home, and those yet unborn, and currently wreaking havoc on my physical well-being. Heh. More on that next month.)

And on that note, I’ll leave you with this candid observation plucked straight from my idyllic-homemaker’s kitchen:

P.S. From the archives…

What “Groundhog Day” Can Teach Us About Ending COVID-19 in The Bigger Picture (from 2021)

It Was Our First Dance. Now It’s a Lullaby in P.S. I Love You (from 2021)

I Wrote This On My Phone in Tiny Bits of Stolen Time in Age of Empathy (from 2022)

Book Reviews Should Include a Location in A Thousand Lives (from 2022)

P.P.S. By the way of absolutely nothing, it’s my birthday month, and I would consider it a very splendid birthday gift if you forwarded this newsletter to someone who might enjoy it, or if you hit that subscribe button if you haven’t already!