The Guide for Fictional Problems
Happy Thanksgiving (in the US anyway)! Today is the day when many in America enjoy turkeys or chickens, potatoes, green beans, corn, cranberry sauce, stuffing, and whatever combination of that or something extra is possible. The general culture started celebrating and marketing Christmas like a month ago, but whatever. not salty
This week I went to a writing meetup, Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month) edition, where we chatted about books, our fiction, our fiction conundrums, and spent the majority of the two hours writing our drafts. I was greatly encouraged by the other women present. I realized that even if a book has cringy scenes, bad wording here and there, and inconsistencies that it can still be a greatly loved book. Plus, your writing only gets better.
By Wednesday I had at last reached chapter 3, The Magical Fair. I had been waiting to write that chapter for five or six years. When I was in high school, a classmate of mine left to go to the restroom. Someone was asking where she was going, and I muttered, “The Magical Fair,” joking to myself that she had casually gone out of the room for a quick escape to that secret and wonderful place. Another classmate of mine immediately pounced on me concerning what I was saying, and joked that I was talking about some magic party I made up. When we graduated, that classmate mentioned in my graduation book, “Hopefully I get to go to the magic party soon.” Not only have I been so excited to go to the Magical Fair myself all these years, but I also can’t wait to take that old classmate and everyone else and their mother there too.
The first book, Fish Out of Water, may suffer under my scrutinizing criticism publicly, and until I am truly certain there is nothing more I can do for it, I shall continue to wonder. (What excellent marketing I am doing for it!) It may be a bit weedy in my eyes, but I know it is still a truly hilarious and exciting adventure. It’s a game of make-believe played in writing by myself and my friend Rachel Lent.
Anyhow, this post is beginning to look a lot like chiasmus (ABCBA rhetorical form.) As I learned this week, not everyone celebrates Thanksgiving the same way. For some it’s celebrated a couple days later at a restaurant, for some it’s a strange time of remembering the loss of a loved one, or both. For me, it’s cooking Thanksgiving dishes for the first time last minute and showing the Macy’s parade. In any case, we’re most grateful, for fiction problems or real problems, that we have an almighty God Who actively cares for us 24/7 and Who is desirous to lead us for our best in mind.