chronological

 The largest difficulty I've encountered in writing this second novel is the need to have my thoughts in chronological order. See normal my thoughts come in order of interest and importance, not time. It’s probably why I lose track of time often. My mind wasn’t wired with time in mind, ironically.   

In order for a story to be well written, readable, engaging, and just plain understandable, the story has to follow some rule of time. Things have to go in sequential order, they can’t bounce around from past to present to past and back to present. Particularly all in the same sentence or paragraph. 

It’s rather frustrating. Because I understand what is going on without explaining absolutely everything, but I as author am expected to. A reader won’t know all that I do about the setting and characters motivations. So there are entire sections of paragraphs and chapters that I want to race past because they are less exciting, and in the heat of it, feel less important. When in reality even the parts I want to race past hold equal value to creating a successful story, and eventually book. 

I would attempt to write you an example, but it’s one of those things my brain does without my permission and it’s hard to do on purpose. But trust me, if you were to read some of the things I write before I got back and fill in the blanks it would be entirely impossible to understand. 

I have what I like to call a uniquely wired brain, and it becomes very out in the open when I write, and I then become aware of why I’m writing the way I am. It’s a bit too introspective sometimes, and so I have to simply shrug, say oh well, and move on. Although it becomes all the more clear to me why some of me teachers, at times, found me frustrating to understand and therefor teach. 

Really I think some of it is the product of impatience and my hands not being able to move as fast as my mind, same goes for my ridiculously large amount of typos. 

It was a funny conversation this week when I got up from my desk to bemoan having to write in chronological order. My mom had no idea what I was talking about, sort of looked at me funny. My dad said I thought like him, and got excited. I’m of the belief that I would be just so much faster if I didn’t have to order my thoughts first before writing them down. 

Oh to give you a bit of a tidbit, I wouldn’t be shocked at all if this novel ended up massively eclipsing my first one in length, by a large margin.  

This piece of writing itself might have become an example, to my chagrin, being that I’ve bounced around in thought and idea. Apologies. I think this particular wiring of my brain is also as fault for my incapability to spell words in the correct order. My brain just does not care at all the order of letters as long as they’re all there. 

So to recap a little, the biggest road block in my writing process as of late is the ordering of my own thoughts. The wiring of my brain makes for an interesting environment, where time is neither here nor there. I am not entirely alone in my way of thinking either. It’s a frustrating process but becoming aware of it has made the whole of it more manoeuvrable. Oh the joys of the writing process.