ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, July 8, 1996 TAG: 9607080139
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: Monty S. Leitch
SOURCE: MONTY S. LEITCH
A FRIEND has reminded me that with July, we start the second half of this year. She has determined, she says, to make the second half of this year better than the first.
I make resolutions, too. Nearly every Monday. I say to myself, "This is the week I'll eat green vegetables every day." Or, "This is the week I'll exercise regularly." If, late on Monday evening, I realize that I've neither eaten my green vegetable nor walked a brisk three miles, I say to myself, "Tomorrow. I'll start this regimen tomorrow." My New Year's Resolutions have been the same for more than 20 years. I keep having to re-resolve them.
Why don't I just give up? Why don't I just accept myself the way I am? I don't know. What's your explanation to yourself? Over the weekend, I worked on a jigsaw puzzle with an 8-year-old friend. It was a daunting puzzle: hundreds, if not thousands of pieces, and the picture they made when they went together was of spools of thread, jumbled together in a pile with pincushions, thimbles, scissors and zippers.
My friend said he was concentrating on the strawberry.
"The strawberry?" I asked. Where was there a strawberry among all those spools of thread? He showed me: the pincushion, a plump red strawberry shape, stuck all over with pins, and plopped right in the middle of that puzzle's picture.
"Oh," I said, doubtfully. I attack a puzzle more methodically, by searching out the straight-edged pieces of the frame, and then, later, filling in the center. How, I wondered, could any other method work? My little friend finished his strawberry before I'd found a dozen straight-edged pieces, no two of which matched.
And then he finished the scissors, a couple of thimbles, most of one zipper, and a spool of nearly-white thread. All while I bumbled around, trying to find the shape of the puzzle's frame.
This is the way writing works, too, although I keep forgetting the lesson: A story is built from the inside out. First, you write the small incidents that you can clearly imagine. The scene in the hospital room or the description of the sea coast at dawn. Then, and only then, after you've assembled enough small incidents, will you be able to see the story's structure, to discern its natural frame.
In other words: First you put together the strawberry, the scissors, the zippers, and the obvious spools of thread. Then, and only then, when you have those sections completed and lying out before you in their proper relationships, will you be able to fit the frame around them.
That's what happened to my friend and me. "Look! Look!" he cried, after he'd fitted the strawberry to the thimble. "Here's one of the corners!" Those meager straight-edged pieces I'd been hoarding. All at once, they made some sense.
Every Monday morning I say, "Today I'll start a novel. I'll get 25 pages written this week, and then next week I can go on to chapter two." But what is this novel's shape? Where are these people going? Up to what will I be leading? This Monday, I say to myself instead, "Start with the strawberry. Start with the scissors. Start with the spool of nearly-white thread." Just give up on the structure for now. Live with the little stories. Eventually, the frame will appear.
Monty S. Leitch is a Roanoke Times columnist.
LENGTH: Medium: 66 linesby CNB