Twentieth post and what have I learned?
It amazes me just how much I cut out of a story. Sometimes I find a really good line and I am reluctant to let it go but no matter how much I try to make it fit, it just won’t work, so no matter how much it pains me, out it goes! Can there be parallels between the clutter in my posts and the clutter in our house? Possibly, but as I look around, it is a thought I would rather not dig into too deeply at the moment.
I also find I am starting to look ahead to future posts as I write the current ones. An example would be the reference to the husky puppy Zag in Fate Or Circumstance part 3. Zag has a very interesting story on his own which one day I plan to tell. Zag illustrates just how intermingled life is in a small town. It is my ambition to eventually link all the posts in the blog together. While Zag had nothing to do with the current story he plays a role in the theme of the entire blog, just as the parking lot at the grocery store in Fate Or Circumstance Part 1 Shadow will also make a future appearance.
Finally, I have found that I am not able to write anything I’m not ready to part with even though those are the posts I should be writing. I have tried to write them but instead I find a hundred other things to do. So I have made up my mind not to dwell on those and hope that in time those stories will allow me to write them.
One such post did manage to sneak through, Fate Or Circumstance Part 1 Shadow! It is the one post I cannot go back and read. That darn dog Shadow is going to haunt me the rest of my life. I only started the story at that point because that is when I decided I actually wanted a dog. I could have easily started with Part two. Once again the story decided how the story was going to be told and I all I could do was go for the ride. When I read the Shadow post to my wife I realized I was not going to be able to finish reading. Half way through I started to feel the lump welling in my throat, the threat of tears in my eyes. When I was actually writing I felt a pull at the old heart-strings, but nothing like I was feeling when I was reading, two sentences later my wife interrupts me and with tears in her eyes says to me, “We should have adopted Shadow” We both know we made the right decision but that doesn’t make it any easier or any less painful. I was surprised I was able to write and publish the post. I can only surmise that Shadow would not be denied again.
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PanningForGold 