Over the past week I had been battling a bad cold. I was not mobile most of the week. All I wanted to really do was sleep or just lie around doing nothing. Unfortunately, I am also a single, working mother so that is not always possible. Oh, to be ten years old again, and able to stay home from school and just eat Mom's chicken noodle soup and watch cartoons all day. Well, since that is not possible I trudged forward. I went to work. I took care of the boy. I talked to friends. I also did not do much writing because any spare time was spent lying down and not moving. All I could really accomplished was a lot of thinking doing that.
Many mornings I get on the train for my long commute into work. As I get closer to my stop, I cross over the Potomac River and see the sight of the Washington Monument and the Thomas Jefferson Memorial outside of my train window. I am always amazed by the sights of Washington, DC and the feel of its history as you enter into the city. It is not a large city but as you come across the river you feel its importance. It is not only beautiful to cross over and see the Potomac and the monuments but you can feel the city's largeness of power if not in size.
One morning last week was a bit rainy and the only good thing was that it at least was not cold. It was more of a light rain, you know, enough to make you annoyed but not enough to really make you wet and angry or happy and splashy. Since the rainy weather was not too bad it was nice enough that the rowing teams from the local high schools were out on the Potomac. I love to watch as they work in unison and move smoothly through the water. The way their arms move and the boats glide through the water is like an animal and yet also like a ballet. It is fascinating to watch.
It got me to thinking also. Here were examples all around me of movement. One was of myself and the painful, disjointed movements I was making when I was sick. The other was the beautiful, graceful, synchronized movements of the rowers on the water looking almost as if they were dancing on water. Everyday and everything we do has some type of rhythm or movement associated with it. Even a person laying on a hospital bed has the fluids moving through tubes and the monitor beating in time to the heart.
Writers as well need to have focus on the movement of their pieces. To me when I think of poetry there has to be some fluidity of movement as if it is a modern dance. It moves you along sometimes without you realizing what is really happening within the story. Short stories though would be more quick, staccato movements like an African tribal dance or a tap dance. There is smoothness in it and yet a quickness that leaves you breathless from the feel of the quick beats as well.
As I am writing my first novel though I have noticed that there is a difference of movement for novels. When you write a novel there needs to be more of a slow, graceful, glide of movement through the story process. You don't want to have a quick story that ends up boring the reader with is predictability. Yet, you also don't want it to drag on and on and on and on, well you get my point. You know those stories, yes Tolstoy I am talking to you. It is like attending the opera with your wife and then hoping to sneak out after the first act but your wife keeps you in the seat next to her. Then you spend your time nodding off and dreaming about the bar and getting a drink at intermission just to get you through the rest of the opera or ballet.
Movement can be beautiful though. As your story progresses you think of a ballet or opera. There is a storyline and a sequence that relates to your story without giving out everything. Sometimes, it works to even slide in a surprise action or a funny action that entices the reader. At the end though there needs to be a movement to your story. It can be graceful or harsh or quick but that movement is what our reader brains move to. So the lesson to myself is to keep that in mind as I entice and move my story along. I don't want to be the girl who has a cold and has to watch all the movement of the ballet around her. I want to keep my own story moving and gliding along smoothly so the reader feels the same.
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