It's a Miracle

 Donis here. I've just started a three month gig as Writer in Residence at the Glendale, AZ, Public Library, and the work on my latest manuscript has suffered a bit as I try to get things started and keep everything in order. This very day (Thursday Sept. 12), I'll be teaching a class on world building, and since I haven't done an in-person class since the pandemic, I've been spending the last week or so polishing up my presentation skills.

I'm getting to the end of my first MS draft, and am very anxious to finish. But there are only so many hours in the day. How, oh how, am I going to get everything done in good order and have it all look like something?

In the movie Shakespeare in Love, whenever things look absolutely hopeless, the theater owner, played by Geoffrey Rush, tells a concerned investor that "everything will turn out all right."

"But how?" asks the worried investor?

"I have no idea," replies the theater owner. "It just always does. It's a miracle."

This is the way writing is for me, at least up to a point. I don't outline the story before I begin. Usually start out with a juicy idea for a murder. For a couple of days thereafter, I ponder on what interesting and unlikely person may have committed this murder. Then I think about the setting and which characters will be involved. I so some research on what was happening in that place at that time, which usually gives me some really interesting story elements.

Then I sit down at the computer and go, go, go, from the beginning to the end. I never end up where I thought I would. I never go in the direction I planned. The story goes where it will and the characters behave however they darn well please. I have been known to be reading on the screen the words my flying fingers are typing and exclaim, "Holy crap!", because I had no idea that was going to happen before it did. Sometimes I get lost and am unable to figure out where I'm going or how I got there. Often I get horribly stuck. But I keep typing, even if I'm spending days typing nothing but drivel, because suddenly I realize that the drivel has given way to deathless prose, and I pound my forehead on the desk, because I don't have a clue how I did it. Then one day I come to the end, and lo and behold, I have a book. I put it away for a few days because at this point I've completely lost any objectivity about the thing whatsoever.

Then, I take it out and look at it with fresh eyes and say, "damn, this isn't bad!" Once again, everything turned out all right. I have no idea how. It just always does. It's a miracle.