So, I’ve been working on this story recently… well, story might not be the right word. Idea. I’ve been working on this idea. It’s a really cool idea and I’m almost absolutely sure it leads to a story, but for the life of me, I couldn’t find the path from here to there. I was getting more and more frustrated with my pages of disconnected scenes and aborted beginnings.

My wife, bless her soul, knows nothing about writing. She doesn’t want to know anything about writing. She hates writing notes in cards, and the notion that someone could enjoy writing anything longer is totally alien to her. And yet… she’s Yoda when it comes to writing advice (and when it comes to me, I suppose). She took one look at me, saw the frustration, and said,

“Put it aside. Work on something else.”

Of course, I didn’t listen. After all, I’m the writer, right? So a few more days of struggling and then I was finally low enough to try anything. I finally listened to my wife. I put it aside.

I picked up a very short story that I wrote about a year ago, only about 1200 words. When I wrote it, I was in the middle of another story and it kept barging in, planting itself obstinately in the center of my brain and demanding to be written. So I wrote it, in the most minimalist way possible, only a beginning and an ending really, but that seemed to satisfy it and it left me alone after that.

I picked it up this weekend. I hadn’t even looked at it in the year since I wrote it. Lightning struck. There was so much more story here that I hadn’t told. I couldn’t write fast enough. I hope that all writers experience that moment when a story flows from void to paper and the writer is nothing more than a conduit through which the story takes form. It’s that feeling that keeps me coming back for more. It’s that magical moment of creation that is the reason I want to write.

So now I have a story, almost ready to send off as my second submission to Odyssey. I’m proud of it and happy knowing that the stories that blindside me like this one did invariably tend to be better than the ones I struggle with.

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