Thanks to the encouragement of my wife, I’ve decided to give a shot at this year’s NaNoWriMo (that’s National Novel Writing Month) and write a novel.
When I first started, I had no idea what the story was going to be about, and for the first two days, I tried to force a story that just didn’t want to be told. It was like pulling teeth; I could get the story to come out, but it felt forced, and read tht way as well. After only two days, I was already losing the hope that I could write a novel.
And then I was struck by inspiration.
It wasn’t that I couldn’t tell a story, but rather that I was trying to tell the wrong story. I took a step back and looked at story I had written, and then immediately threw it in the trash.
Then I looked at the shorts stories I had started, and in particular the one that absolutely fascinated me–and had already rewritten the small portion I’d done three times. Now this was a story that wanted to be told, so I instead made this the focus of my novel.
The words began to flow, and I can already see where this story might go. My experience with this got me to thinking about writing on the whole. Whether it’s an essay, poem, short story, novel, biography, or whatever, I think that every piece of writing has the same underlying issue: trying to figure out what story you need to tell.
It isn’t that some form of writing is too difficult for anyone, or that any given person can’t write a story. It’s that they’re trying to force a story instead of taking the time to find the right story.
Writing isn’t supposed to be difficult, it’s supposed to be fun, and finding the right story can help show that.
