Point and stare

[mrissa]

akirlu says: If the business of writing is about anything, it's about making decisions and living with the consequences.

And it's such a smart true thing that I just wanted to point and stare and go, "Look! Smart true thing!", especially as revisions -- to a sequel, no less -- make this central to my daily life at the moment. The notecards I am writing out for future volumes could easily fall under the category of, "Decisions you've made, and now you have to live with them." Every last one. Some of them with entire invasions based on one clause in one sentence. Butterfly wings, people.

(The entry in whose comment section she says it is spoilery for Wicked -- if you want to see it, it's here, but she's been scrupulous about cut-tagging for any possible spoilers, so I want to be no less careful.)

Comments

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I think this is where RPGs are giving me interesting training for sequel- and series-writing. I've been playing the same character in one game for over three years now, and when I want to do something with her, I have to do it within the framework of decisions made ages ago, which I cannot go back and change. It's especially teaching me the art of re-interpreting earlier bits of the story to put different but plausible new spins on What They Meant.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Exactly. Living with consequences doesn't necessarily mean that nothing can be different from what you initially thought it was. It just means that sometimes you have to do the fancy footwork to get there.