Poor Advice for writing; knowing how to end before you begin.
This year, in the two-thousandth and twenty-fourth year of our Lord, I decided to start a new project, a novella that would change the world (that’s dramatic – In fact it will change nothing). I told myself it would be easy, it would be quick and creative project to complete. I came up with the concept, the title, and the cover in a day! I was, and still am excited and pleased with what I came up with. I really believed that putting this fresh story down on paper would be just as easy! In six months, I really thought I would be shipping this story out to the world.
Oh, how silly that was to believe. Four months into the year and I only have a page and half written. Time is the great discourager. While over time we may gain wisdom, we can also loose patience.
I was once told by someone, “know the end before you begin.” In some forms of writing, that bit of advice may be true. However, for some reason, I let that advice overrule a creative flow that I once had. It had placed me in box, a cell that I couldn’t break out of. I’m still in that box… that prison.
The words of Mel Robbins are more suitable for storytelling, “Start before you’re ready, Don’t prepare, begin.“
The quote from Robbins, if applied to creative writing, allows the creator to produce a natural flow in writing, letting the events and characters take us to the ending. If I MUST know the end before I begin, that means I have to have the fate of the characters, the state of the world, predestined. Giving the characters a will of their own seems like a much better Idea.
The end will arrive – when it arrives.