I actually wrote this a few weeks ago, at the end of a rough day of writing, but wasn’t quite ready to post it, then–so I’m posting it now, instead.
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So I forced myself to back away from the keyboard aside and went for a run. It was late, after dark, so I went to the indoor track at our local parks and rec center, turned up the comfort music on my headphones, broke into a slow jog (which is still a fair amount of work for this new runner), and let my mind drift free.
Said mind was a noisy place that night, with my characters jabbering on and on, because leaving the keyboard doesn’t mean you get to fully leave what you created there behind.
Then through all that jabbering this one character, K, said quietly, “Trust your magic.” It wasn’t new or surprising advice, seeing as just a few days ago I’d edited the scenes in which she gave it.
I did quite a few laps around that indoor track with those words echoing through my head. “Trust your magic.” K is fairly wise about such things; wise enough that I have to limit her time on stage, or else she would unbalance the whole story.
But as I circled the track it occurred to me that like my characters, I could do far worse than to trust my magic. We all could.
I was still thinking about this when another runner came up behind me on the track. He ran with what looked like a sort of slow effortlessness–the sort of effortlessness that made me certain he was working way less hard at this running thing than I was–and yet he quickly passed me and disappeared into the distance. I shrugged and thought, “Well, that’s him; it’s not me. I run the way I run. I’m in the place I’m in.” I was fine with that, just as I have been throughout the process of learning to run.
Yet now I also thought, “Well, if it’s so easy to be that way about running, why can’t I be that way about writing, too?”
A good question. Much of the time, I am. But last night, it was good to be reminded.
As it turned out, the fast-yet-seemingly-effortless runner, who started running after me, left the track before me. We probably went the same distance in the end, for all that we got there different ways.
Just before I left the track myself, one more voice in my head spoke up, from out of another story entirely. “If all else fails,” that character whispered to me, “we can always turn you into a bird.”
I like to think she only said this because I needed to be reminded to laugh more as I write, too. But perhaps I’ll … approach her with a bit more respect when next I return to her story, just the same.