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| February 2015 |
"I discovered that if I trusted my subconscious, or imagination, whatever you want to call it, and if I made the characters as real and honest as I could, then no matter how complex the pattern being woven, my subconscious would find ways to tie it together--often doing things far more complicated and sophisticated than I could with brute conscious effort. I would have ideas for 'nodes,' as I think of them--story or character details that have lots of potential connections to other such nodes--and even though I didn't quite understand, I would plunk them in. Two hundred pages later, everything would back-fit, and I'd say, 'Ah, that's why I wrote that.'" --Tad Williams
Do you trust your imagination to come through for you in your writing? Have you ever experienced an "ah-ha" moment when an unexpected but welcomed detail bubbled up from your subconscious and surprised you, making you ask where did that come from? Doesn't it make you want to push through to the end of that first draft in order to see how all those "nodes" connect?
There's hope in the midst of the pain of a first draft. Just look for the gift of the nodes and trust they will eventually connect to build a commanding story!
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