A writer-friend recently expressed her discouragement about how long it is taking her to write her current story. She’s written several, so she knows the ropes but this latest one seems to be more of a burden than a joy.

I reminded her that all things take time. She’s inventing a world after all, and it’s OK that it takes a long time to get her creation the way she envisions it. Humans cannot walk for a year or more after birth, and cannot speak for two or three years. You can’t push the river.

Stories can be like babies but an early writing teacher told our class, “Don’t think of your stories as children, they are not your children.” But it is natural to think of stories this way. A story depends on its creator to develop and nurture it. Your story begins as an idea and that idea grows in the direction you guide it.  It has ups and downs and growing pains, but it matures over time. (Unless you stick it in a drawer for several years, but that’s OK too. For a story, I mean, not a child.)

My friend’s story seems to test her boundaries, not revealing where it is going, and coming home late with questionable characters. Her story could be a teen and all she can do is listen to them. Where do they want to go? Why are they resisting her direction? Why does it seem so hard to sit them in a chair and wrestle a coherent sentence from them?

Give it time. Writing stories of any length, even 100 word stories, take time. You cannot force them, you cannot lock them in their room, you cannot make the teen nor the story obey you. It has a life. Listen to it. Maybe it will say, “I don’t want to go to that character’s house, I want to invite my friends over and order pizza and hang out at home.”

Rome wasn’t built in a day. (In fact, per Google, it took 800 years.) Stories are entire worlds, populated with amazing people, many of whom you know as intimately as yourself, and capable of extraordinary feats. Characters are unpredictable and may betray their best friend. Settings change and evolve with flooding and earthquakes, the construction of vast factories, the cutting of forests and the rising of tides to new heights. Plots thicken by showing your character cooking a rich green pea soup, or following the smell of ginger cake, or hearing their mother telling them to get up or they’ll miss the bus and be late for school again. All of these details weave the walls of your story and lead the reader to, ‘Oh my god, what is going to happen next?’ Will the soup spill all over the floor and drip into the apartment below? Is the cake laced with poison? Will the schoolchild accept a ride with a neighbor because they missed the bus?’ (Hmm, there’s a story there.)

A good story takes time. You are building a high-rise or a mountain lodge. It is not completed in weeks or months. So, do not be discouraged. Step away and do something else for an hour or two. Listen to what your story is telling you. 

I don’t believe a story has ever said, “Don’t tell anyone about me.” It may be a burden, but a story wants to live. And to live, a story must be read, and before that, it must be written. By you and by me; that’s our job.

Until next space…