That Eureka Moment

I think it was RS Guthrie, in an interview, who said writing a book is made up of two stages. How true that is. During that first stage, you, the author, have to push. At this stage the story and characters are indistinct. As the writer you have to constantly push to make them distinct as you head towards the second stage - the pull stage. This second stage is the most exciting. The characters and premise for the story, literally come to life. The second stage is all about the journey as the characters pull you to the end.

The first stage, the push one, is very hard work. It is the stage you hear writers talk about when they will find anything to do other than write. I read recently a Guardian writer with a book deadline drove half-way across Europe looking  for the perfect venue for creativity. In the process avoiding the very thing he was contracted to do. It is so very tough. It's tough because you have to create characters that involve the reader emotionally, that the reader will see as a real person. To create these characters you have to somehow dredge characteristics from your life experiences that you will place, layer upon layer, until you have a living and breathing entity, one whose depth of thought and action, reaches out to the reader and drives the story. In doing this you can find yourself writing 1,000 words to express each 100 word stream of thought. You constantly shuffle images and narrative in your mind, until the right picture and voice combined somehow stick. It is not sudden, it's gradual and torturous. You can totally understand how Stephen King came to write 'The Dark Half'.

If it was RS Guthrie that defined the push and pull stages for me, it was Adam Croft that said you get through these hardest writing moments by committing to just 30 minutes at a time. Instead of writing a blog or researching some distantly relevant detail, or driving across Europe, you write by promising yourself it will only be for 30 minutes. To just see where it takes you. It is a strategy I have adopted these last few weeks and has steadily seen me progress the story and the characters in my mind. So much so, I was walking across Hyde Park two days ago and had my eureka moment.

http://bit.ly/zjO68u

This eureka moment is not the transition from push to pull, but rather the one that will drive the transition, because it will also be a key factor in driving the story to it's conclusion. It's what I will be pulling towards. It is in reality a moment in the story that I have known for a long time, but have not known the characters enough to see how they get there. It was the main female character's internal dialogue, spinning in my mind as I headed towards Park Lane, that resulted in the epiphany. It wasn't so much the moment but her voice in that moment. It is not so much even what she gives herself to, but in knowing the love with which she does it and how long it has existed inside of her.

In realising this the character has become distinct for me. I see her. I hear her. I know what she has been. I know what she hopes for. Unlike the equal moment in Chasing Innocence it does not exist within the final paragraphs of the story. In this case it's the catalyst that propels us to the conclusion. If there's a dry eye in the house I will have failed miserably as a writer.