The Magic Pen

I would like to create a magic pen for every writer to help them understand the fine line between letting their story breathe and choking it to death. The pen would have a few special features:

Writers could flick it in quick, grandiose arcs to make the bad words fly off the page and dissipate into thin air, leaving only the good words behind.

The pen wouldn't allow them to write for at least a week...maybe two... following every feedback session.

The pen has a filter that allows a writer to absorb only questions which help them figure out their story.

The pen knows, instinctively, which people will provide feedback in a way that helps them grow as a writer.

But here's the thing...

Writers already have that pen. They just have to figure out how to use the darn thing while it's exploding huge ink splotches all over their faces. Because the fact is...those ink splotches and Lost Stories are what you need, or you will wrap yourself so tightly around your story it will suck in its last, gasping bit of air before you finish the first draft.

You have to give yourself permission to be messy. And fail. And take breaks. And say no. And listen.

So that your story can breathe.

What are you doing to help you figure out how to use your pen?

The Lost Story

Seven years ago I sat between my kids' beds and told them a very sweet story. A story that held the soft tha-thump, tha-thump of a beating heart ready to fall asleep.

That bedtime story became a play which won a developmental opportunity at a theatre. For anyone not familiar with new play development, that means I had a director, actors, theatre space, two dramaturgs, elementary student feedback, and theatre professionals feedback while I wrote and rewrote feverishly for a week, working the play on its feet. All expenses paid.

But when I was finished, I hated my play. It was...in a word...AWFUL.

Somewhere, in the middle of rewriting and advice and work and ideas, I lost my story.

Looking back now I can see multiple influences on my muck of a play, but the largest was a choice of my own. In my desire to perfect my play, I spent so much time listening to everyone else's feedback telling me how to do it I forgot to listen to my story. I twisted and turned it into something it was not and while, technically, it makes sense, the heart of the story is gone.

And here is a hard, honest truth: every writer loses one story. Maybe more.

They take in a comment, an idea, some advice...because conventional wisdom says that's what rewrites are about...and even though their instincts tell them not to listen, they ignore the warnings.

Don't think I'm not a rewrite person. I'm a ten-draft girl who works on computer and paper. I scribble and scrabble my ideas until I understand every choice each character makes. I read aloud and act out scenes. I try things on and take them off faster than clothes in a teen store dressing room.

I'm also a believer in holding the heart of your story close, because you are the one telling it.

I may never get my seven year old story back. I am extremely, rock in my stomach sad when I think about it.

But I still work on it. And when I do I go back to the beginning...because that's when it still had a beating heart.

What have you lost?