Maturation as a Writer

"Help me believe it's not the real me..."-Three Days Grace, Animal

Had an interesting moment as I spent all day yesterday in airports and on planes trying to get home for Christmas. I've never minded these days as much as a lot of other folks do, because I find there's plenty of downtime to get thinking and planning done for my writing, even if I rarely have success trying to write (those coach seats are just too small for my laptop).

So after my flight from Cleveland to Denver got off the ground last night, I settled back in my seat, turned on my Zen (MP3 player) and started thinking about some unresolved issues still plaguing my novel, as well as reviewing the direction I plan to take it when I begin rewriting it.

About an hour or so into this process I had an interesting realization: I was thinking in terms of theme, character development, and point of view. This was a surprise to me because for most my writing life, when I've set back to think about my books I've spent most of the time imagining plot elements, climactic scenes, epic battles, and the like.

I can't say for sure what this change implies for me as a writer, but I'd like to think it's that I've matured. I understand how books and stories are constructed in a much better way now than I have in the past, and I'm glad to see my thought processes reflecting that. It's not to say that I didn't dream up any epic scenes (I was rewriting the confrontation between my protagonist and antagonist in my head somewhere over Iowa and man, is it going to be ten thousand times better...) but I spent as much or more time planning how to set them up, how to make them climactic in many ways--the culmination of multiple stories that have been building since chapter one and the beginning of new ones that will lead into the next book--rather than just exciting, or the necessary endgame of the "What's going to happen?" question that the book begins with.

In short, my work over the past year has paid off, and I can now suggest it to others. Go study narrative (on your own terms, not in classes) and work in publishing! You won't regret it. :-)