Yes, we’ve had some rain in Oregon. I have to come clean. Mud puddles are not my preferred body of water. Murky brown glimmers or shining silver sheets on the path or road hold terrors and mysteries my horse and I can only speculate about. Does that wet patch lying dead flat ahead or shimmering in a breeze, hide a rock, a bog, perhaps even a bottomless hole?
Same deal when an author writes toward a perceived hole or other obstacle in a book. I write forward boldly, stodgily or timidly, for forward I must go. While the soggy monster lying in the way grows larger and more threatening. I am drawn toward it, and yet I fear it. Funny thing is, the closer it looms the more I start second-guessing and questioning why I even considered such a random development in the first place. Why on Earth did I think I need this question, that scene, this surprising dialog, that shocking denouement? Am I mad? My heroine would never, SHOULD never, do such a thing. It’s out of character.
But is it really? I put a toe in, keeping one foot back on solid ground, and what the heck. Write her into the puddle, see what happens. My writers group balks. “You can’t have her/him doing that. It’s not realistic. Your readers won’t like it. I don’t like it.” I sulk a moment. Then I rise to the challenge.
“You say my amateur sleuth, Pepper Kane, wouldn’t let her memory challenged, 80-YO father go on night patrol on the guest ranch after a body was found? And that I, the writer, shouldn’t make him go?
It’s the the nudge this Creative needed. Go ahead. Tell me I can’t do it. Then I’ll move heaven and earth to prove you wrong, make my book even better than I’d imagined. What’s “wrong” suddenly seems terribly right. This plot twist, this character trait, was never expected. But that’s why it’s so damned satisfying when it works.
Does something similar happen to you? The more you want something, the more resistance you encounter, the less time or energy you seem have to go through or get past something unresolved or unpleasant? Yet you lift your chin, call in your courage and imagination, and tackle it anyway? I bet you often find it turns out pretty well, in the end. Maybe better than everyone thought.
My parting words to you, when writing, when living, when facing puddles? Maybe even a whole swamp? Embrace the mud!