V. H. King's Ink

I ran track in middle school. So did everyone else–or that’s what it seemed like. I tried just about every event, but I quickly discovered that pole-vaulting and hurdles weren’t for me. One day at practice, I made it (mostly) over one hurdle just to fall on my face after tangling myself in the next one. I could have kept at it, but the team had plenty of good hurdlers already. My coaches advised me to stick to discus, shot-put, and the 4×1. I was okay with that.

Rewriting is a bit like that second hurdle. I know the objective. I have a more focused idea for the plot–not just for this book, but for 9 other books that are related to it. (It’s kind of a lot. I’ll probably tell you more about it, some time.) I finished the opening section of scenes–roughly three chapters. And now I feel like I’ve fallen on my face.

Unlike middle school track & field, I’m the only one on this team. Except that’s a lie, because there are a lot of people who believe in me. Encouragement takes many forms. Sometimes it’s listening as I panic about the scope of a project that I ave no idea how to wrangle. Other times it’s reading through and pointing out where things don’t make sense. Little things along the way help me refine my storytelling, whether that’s creating alternate universes with friends or reading through my (incomplete) collection of works by Dean Koontz and Stephen King.

I love to write for the feeling of it. There’s a rush to putting words on paper (or seeing them appear on a screen). I get excited about all the connections between characters and plot points. Usually that means I feel like I shot myself in the foot, when I recognize that I set something up without even realizing it.

The best ideas always seem to hurt (me) the most.

And I live for it.

Most of my frustration with the rewrite process comes from the fear that I won’t do my characters justice. Their stories deserve to be told. They have a right to develop their worldview, to reach their own conclusions. If you can’t tell, I don’t really consider myself the godlike executor of a story. More often than not, it feels like the characters are driving and I’m tied up in the trunk. Sometimes I’m lucky enough to be strapped to the roof, but seeing the crash that’s about to happen isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

When I’m revising, I tend to worry that I’m getting in their way. Some people might say you can’t always trust your feelings, and other people will say to trust your heart over your head. Me? Well, I’ve taken to trusting that my characters know how their stories need to be told–and hopefully they’ll clue me in somewhere along the way.