Floundering

Sometimes when I’m in the middle of a story I feel like a landed fish, flopping in a panic. Barbara Abercrombie, in A Year of Living Dangerously, reminds me that this is okay.

“To write takes dreaming and remembering and thinking and imagining – and very often what feels like wasting time. It takes silence and solitude. It takes being okay with making a huge mess and not knowing what you’re doing. Then it takes rewriting and struggling to find your story and the truth of the story, and then the meaning of the story. It takes being comfortable with your own doubts and fears and questions. And there’s just no fast and easy way around it.”

I find this reassuring, when I feel like I’m floundering in a story, to remember that this is what writers do.

Maureen