Saturday morning I sit at the local café reading the newest edition of
the Writer. This act is a precursor to beginning work on the story at hand just as this post is a warm up for my other writing. In both cases the story is Changing Tides. I know I have mentioned this story in older posts and it's one which I've been easing myself back into. However, I'm now up against the do or die deadline. This is the story I'm going to work on in Newfoundland when I attend
Piper's Frith and I have to put it back together before I go because in it's current million and one, okay I exaggerate, pieces it would never survive the trip in any recognizable state.
I first wrote Changing Tides in the fall of 2005. In 2008 I painstakingly revised it, polishing the flow in an attempt to prepare it for a reading. That's when I realized it was missing... something. It was mostly a very well painted backdrop strung on a beautiful island of prose. Masked somewhere behind the conscious words I'd thoughtfully written was the rest of the story, for which I would need to search my subconscious. So, with a setting rich enough to taste, crafted with gorgeous scenic descriptions (which I loved!) setting both tone and mood with perfect clarity - the story nevertheless lay stranded in limbo, lacking a strong enough plot to carry it off. Until now...
As I read through the 5 new beginnings I've made since then, I make notes and questions to help me bare the meat, to locate the life line - the missing connections to something. To what? As the flesh begins to emerge I'm startled when the missing "details" suddenly show themselves unexpectedly and I begin to see how it fits and why it was so hard to include; how emotionally charged it makes me feel - how deep the connection is - it scares me and excites me at the same time. It's not that I haven't discovered the emotional connection to a story before, but it's never been this strong or quite like this. And I realize this is what Jenny Rough was talking about in her article, "The Essayist finds her stride," in Septembers issues of the Writer, when she describes sculling. She uses her her experience in learning to scull to explain how she uncovers the missing pieces in her writing - the emotional connection, that something that makes the writing work and brings it alive.
The more I continue to delve into the missing pieces of Changing Tides the clearer this reveal becomes and I'm startled to discover the backdrop colours, moods and highlights are all in the right spots to reflect and display them to the best advantage - like a stage set built to order, waiting for the main attraction. An event I now acknowledge I could not have written in 2005 or 2008 because it contains aspects of my life I had not yet allowed myself to see. Things and feelings I was not ready to face at that time. Perhaps one could argue that the piece would not be the same as it is now had I finished it 2 years ago, but I believe differently. I believe it was always meant to be what it is now and I'm awed by the genius way it all fits together.
This revision will still be difficult, but I know from experience it's often the most difficult things which are the most rewarding and I am eager to begin work on it. However, in retrospect I wonder if, just as this unwillingness or inability to reveal certain aspects of myself stopped me from being able to write the crux of this story 2 years ago, perhaps it's the same thing that's also at the root of the writer's block some people experience.
