Roads to Joy

It’s been a while, it feels like, since I tried to create a story out of nothing but my imagination. And yesterday was no exception, because in fact the reality of the lived experience was still so vivid that I could re-create it from real life, and cast it into story mode. So I did.

I do enjoy imagination, and creating something from nothing. But many times I feel that it’s important to try to make a story out of ‘what really happened.’ The story-telling helps to understand the experience, to see nuances that a mere recitation of the events does not convey. The story develops a structure; the characters need an expression, a description of sorts, to bring them alive. By attempting to reveal their humanity, something of my own experience is revealed, through the story, that I’d missed in merely living it.

How surpassingly strange is that, I wonder?! And yet, after crashing the keys out over the course of half an hour yesterday afternoon, I had the basis of the story, and the next few hours before sleeping and after waking have been spent mostly in finessing, crafting this and that interaction to reach a delightful completion.

Story done, exported to the regulation Word.docx, and submitted to the writing group. There’s nothing quite like that quick burst of joy when a task has been sorted, even though this morning will now be a bustle of other activity. Got the mental exercise done and dusted, and now the description of the joy that the accomplishment entailed.

And my little story will, I expect, join the ranks of the archive that has been growing, in inexorable fashion, over these past three years of conscientious creative writing. It’s all great fun, and when I am old (I know I should say –er!) I shall have my archive neatly printed and then I shall spend endless hours regaling myself with stories and reminiscences that I’d long forgotten.

Perhaps it’s like laying up treasures in heaven, this archiving lark, for me to enjoy later!