Bett Norris

Today was a productive day. Up at 2:30 am, wandering through various sites, checking email, and settling in to write. I somehow managed to break the logjam that was my head, stuffed full of what comes next or what shouldn't come next,  playing  a game, finally opening the file.

That's always important, to just open the darn file and look at it, skim through what's there, see how much work I've done, glance through the last day's work, just get settled into it again. Even if not one word gets written, not one step forward toward that desperately sought end, it is important to stay on touchy-feely terms with the ms, to actually wander through it on on a regular, steady, scheduled basis. Keep it fresh and real and in the front of the mind, like a thing that won't grow or live unless it is handled often.

Many times, the file for What's Best for Jane gets opened, but not much in the way of going forward actually happens.

Today, this morning, a remarkable and rare thing happened. I got something done. I saw a way through the logjam. Three chapters just popped into my head, sprang open, got read and edited and positioned appropriately to the sequence and the plot, and they fit.

I had been thinking about this character, a minor one in Miss McGhee, and I wanted to use him somehow in the sequel, had written a couple of chapters for him, but they didn't work.

How and why does this phenomenon occur? Unschooled but not undisciplined as a writer, I choose to explain it this way. It happens because I make it happen, because I wait for it, because I keep pushing through the tedious work that writing sometimes can be to get to the good stuff. Rare breakthroughs can be seen as a direct result of the hard slogging. 

Anyway, I was thinking about this character and how I might use him to show something about how the changes wrought by the civil rights movement affected people in the fictional town where Mary lives. I could also use him to show what had changed and what had not changed about Mary herself. But I couldn't use what I had written, not without tinkering and refining and rewriting the whole tone and thrust of what I had laboriously crammed onto paper.

I was thinking at the same time about three remarkable weeks in March of 1965, how they impacted the country, how they changed Mary's life, and affected the town as well. For a long time, a phrase had been running through my head that I wanted to use. I wanted to have Mary reflect back on that time, the march from Selma to Montgomery, and what it meant to her.

So I found a way to tie all those things together. Now I have to let those three chapters sit and ferment, to cook a little, and go back to them tomorrow or in a week, so I can look at them with fresh eyes.

That's what I did this morning at 2:30 am.