Ways and Means
by Rosalind Foley on 06/06/12
I have a friend who could make up a full blown romance novel during a ninety mile drive. Lucky those facile tale spinners who can roll out a story as if it were a spool of shiny ribbon waiting to be unfurled. Characters and crises fall to their pages in flurries of creation.
Tht doesn't happen for me. I'm one of the carvers, the kind who have to stare out the window until the story comes, let it hatch, then shift it, shape it, shave it. Not till I put it aside and the first fervor has cooled down can I return to it with a more objective eye. The irony is that some of the writing that felt so inspired (writers, beware) is, in the next day's light, dull, while some of the lines that seemed mundane have gained sparkle.
In the end I guess it isn't how you write but that you persevere.
