Hi all,
March is always happy for me because it means February is over. February is the worst month in my opinion. The excitement of Christmas has truly worn off, and the new shoe feeling of January is gone. And it’s so dark. Still winter. Ah, but March. March is the beginning of spring, of the days getting longer, of feeling better again. So happy March!
This month I’m thinking about fiction, because I’m doing one of the many fiction courses in MasterClass, an online teaching app thingy. I’m trying to write this story about a photographer, you see, but she keeps not knowing what she wants to do next and so I keep having to stop writing and wait for her to decide. I’m close to the climax, I can feel it, but she has a big decision to make and she hasn’t made it yet, and so I can’t write the ending.
It’s annoying.
If fiction writers were to be divided into two groups, for the purpose of a million-strong tug of war perhaps, or a Ripley’s Believe It or Not size dodgeball game, they could be divided into plotters and pantsers. Plotters are the ones who have a plan before they start writing. Pantsers (as in flying by the seat of) are the ones who have no idea what is going to happen, or almost no idea, or nothing written down anyway, until they do the actual writing. I am a pantser. I honestly do not know what will happen next in my story until my character gets herself off her butt and does whatever it is she is going to do.
Even when I have a bit of an idea about how it should go, how the characters should behave, they decide for themselves. I remember having a hissy fit many years ago about my writing. My brother (poor unsuspecting thing that he was) asked what was wrong. “My character is being stupid!” I emoted. “I told her not to do something, and then she did it, and now I don’t know what will happen next and also I’m not sure I like her anymore.” (Because it was a morally not-cool thing she had done, and I was disappointed in her.) “You’re the writer,” my brother said. “Can’t you just write down that she did whatever it was you thought she should do?” Ah, poor naïve brother, with no idea how twisted the mind of a writer can get. Because if I wrote down that she did what I wanted her to do, first of all I’d be lying, and second of all the writing would stop because she would join a union and work to rule and refuse to make any more decisions ever again. I had to write down what she actually did, and wait for her to do something else, and then write that down too. And I’m still disappointed in her, even though the story has long been abandoned.
Writing fiction for me, I explained to my brother, is like having a terrarium in the back of your head, with little people in it. And you watch the people in the terrarium, and describe them, and then report on what they do as they get themselves into (and hopefully out of, but that’s harder) trouble. The people in the terrarium are me, I know, but they are also in some weird writerly way not-me, and they don’t listen to what I tell them. It’s more a case of me listening to them.
It’s a problem. It’s also my favourite part of the whole thing.
I’ll let you know if my photographer ever decides what she wants to do next.
FROM THE SPIRAL NOTEBOOK
It seems appropriate, after complaining about February, to share an ode to said month. This was written in Vancouver (and I do realize that, as a West Coaster, I’m very annoying when I complain about winter since mine is so mild. Sorry to those of you living just about anywhere else).
February
Snowdrops at 14th and Willow
what have they lost
that they all look down?
Orange peel still
mostly spherical
emptiness within
pith a perfect white
makes a rime of frost
Even in Vancouver
we are in winter
NOTES
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And thanks, as always, for reading.
Yours,
Kelsey
kelseyandrews.ca
Oh how I love this piece!