Storybook Weaver

First off, I’m sure everybody knows right already about the earthquake in Japan. I am praying for them, and I hope you are too. With the 8.9 earthquake, followed by tsunami and threats of nuclear plants spewing radiation all over the place, they need all the prayers they can get.

I am happy to say that the snag I hit didn’t last very long. It was mostly a matter of skipping the intro and going straight to the important part of the scene. In late, out early, as they say.

I once had a program on the computer called Storybook Weaver. I used it when I was probably seven or eight to write little silly stories about rabbits and crabs and other things like that. I never really thought about why it had the name it did, why it was called Storybook Weaver, but I think I can finally say I understand.

You see, I’m currently at a point in my novel where everything is almost coming together. Not long ago, I had an epiphany which resulted with me finally admitting that a character I had been struggling with was simply unnecessary. He did nothing to advance the plot—not even provide humor (which I’m not very good at, honestly). He was also very bland and two dimensional.

As soon as I decided I would scratch him from the plot, the floodgates of inspiration opened, and many other things became clear. Plotlines met in the middle, other character’s personalities suddenly made themselves clear, and many things that I had written in the beginning were obsolete or needed editing to get them up-to-date.

I knew from experience that if I went back right then and re-wrote those beginning scenes, I would likely never get to the end of the story, so I decided to just pretend that all those things had happened, and keep writing forward.

So, I broke out my Plotting Notebook, pens and sticky notes, and began to see where I was going. The strange thing about this arrangement is that now, everything is in a very volatile state; it doesn’t matter whether I wrote the scene yesterday or a year ago, it is all at once written in sand and set in stone. It has happened, yet maybe it hasn’t, depending on what the plotline calls for.

The end is in sight, but I’m far from it. I feel like I’m taking the pieces of plot and spinning a spider’s web from them. It’s patchwork, piecemeal. I have to make the beginning match with the end, and the end with the beginning. All the guns left on mantelpieces must go off. I must give enough information to keep them interested, yet withhold enough to do the same. So now, I can see that it’s no wonder they call story-telling weaving. I am a Weaver. I am a Writer.