One of the recurrent difficulties I’m having just now is the inability to solve old narrative problems in new ways. My brain is strangely resistant to coming up with new answers to problems I have already answered.
It goes like this:
Maybe I’ll write a scene where Marie encounters her arch-nemesis Fred at the bank where she works as a teller. She knows it’s him because she reads his name in the account information. But no, I later realize, that’s wrong. This is a Labor Day story! The bank would be closed. So, where can she meet him, and learn his identity? Where? Where, where, where? Hmmm… where?
Oh, I know! says my brain. I have it!
She sees him at the bank! He comes in to deposit his paycheck and she reads the name off of his account. Because she’s a teller! Isn’t that brilliant?!
Brain! I say. You’re not helping. Be quiet and just let me think! Now where can she meet him? Hmmm…
At the bank! says my brain.
And so on. When I write a scene one way, it’s as though it cements that way in my imagination. And if it doesn’t work, I have to mentally wrestle a new scanario from my brain. And believe me, wrestle is the exact word for it.
Writing fatigue? Time to move on to a new story?
Time for another short story, I’d say
Merrilee: That’s what I think, too. It’s hard to let go! Thanks for responding.
Sometimes you need just a little distance, so you can see the canker in the forest, instead of seeing the individual dead trees.
Ooh, I’m all metaphorical today
I might have approached it differently. If the characters are so insistent that they meet at the bank, my story would have to start a day earlier when the banks are open…or she works at a bank that is open on Saturdays.
At least for the rough drafts I try not to fight with the characters TOO much. I get my way in the edits.