Shannon Schuren, Author
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Life is good.
As I type this, everything is better. The sun is brighter, my children are sweeter. The bacon is crisper.
I have found my bliss, and it is the ending of my novel! Not ending as in I have finished, but ending as in I now KNOW WHAT HAPPENS!
This may come as a surprise to some of you, but when I began this journey to breathe life into a new novel on November 1st, I had no idea where it was headed. This is probably true for a lot of novelists when they begin, but I usually have more of an outline and notes and character profiles before I begin. This year, I jumped in blind and trusted my faithful subconscious to lead me through.
And she did it!
As I have been wandering these past 20 days, lost and confused and assured of my own failure, she has been silently toiling in the background, feeding me bits of plot at a time until this morning, when in a moment of blinding enlightenment, she handed over the plot in its entirety.
And it’s good!
And guess what’s even better? All those little bits that I dropped in throughout the way, just because I needed to put words on the page and thought I was fresh out of ideas? Things like the fact that Tansy’s father owned a floral shop, and Hermie is a computer whiz? Not only do I not need to cut them in revision, but it turns out they are INTEGRAL TO THE PLOT!
Who knew?
No one, apparently, except for my sly subconscious. I should really reward her with something really special. Trouble is, I don’t know what she likes. She rarely talks about herself. (She’s very secretive.)
Yesterday, I visited with my sister-in-law’s class at Northside Intermediate. (Shout out to all Miss Schuren’s fourth graders!) They were awesome, and asked me some really great questions, one of which I’d just like to clarify. I was asked which part of writing I liked best, and I told them I love the idea process, brainstorming and working with an idea until it morphs into a workable plot. And I do really enjoy that part.
But this, the moment of total clarity when all the plot strings I’ve been dangling in the hopes of getting a nibble of something coherent, when they suddenly tie themselves together in a way that is fresh and exciting and oh, so right?
This is my bliss.
