Mapping a Path

Topography first. Then, little by little, rewrite by rewrite, a path through it.

Sometimes, a story grabs you by the shirt and won’t let you go.

That’s how a dear friend describes the experience that led her to write her first novel. (And rewrite it. And then rewrite it again.)

I know what she means, because it’s happened to me. I’m not a writer. Just the lightning rod for a story that must reach its readers at all costs.

Only the story knows what it needs. Only I can listen.

Beginning a new story: walking through a dark doorway and patting the wall for a light switch. There is none. This is a room without electricity. The only way to map it is with your fingertips. Every inch, every bump. If there’s an obstacle, you’ll find it by stumbling over it. You will be bruised.

Topography first. Then, little by little, rewrite by rewrite, a path through it.

Finally, finding new channels through which the plot can flow more quickly. That’s where I am now. Re-arcing the plot: I struggle with it the way I struggled, at the age of eleven, to string the longbow my father kept in the barn. Bracing one bare foot against the butt end of a springy, slippery wand of wood, inching the tip down to meet the braided string. Never succeeding. The bow always bounced back, taut and wiry, full of its own ideas. Stories have a coil and spring like that, like that they must be forced to swell and taper, like that they fight me. Demanding the touch of someone with more muscle, more experience. Someone at least twice my size.

Alfred Stevens, "Study of a Kneeling Boy Bending a Bow"