So to work on the story! As I've been wrestling with new chapters and with a fuller outline, I begin to see more solid shape, direction, and form. Surrounded as I am by the Michigan woods, I find the imagery of the forest very apt right now:
The first stages of writing feel to me like I've wandered off the beaten path and gotten lost in a trackless patch of woods with no clear direction, only some vistas afar off, through the branches and brambles. But how to get there? What a mess.
Later, after living with and pummeling the story (and being pummeled by the characters), digging up some delightful scenes and pruning away extraneous details, the direction becomes clearer, the way more orderly, and eventually may even feel like this:
I am somewhere inbetween the two right now. But thanks to the tranquility and quiet spaces of the past two days, I am closer to the clear path than I was.
An hour's cleaning leaves the Mother Lodge as immaculate as I found it. I drive back home, sucked into the vortex of refugee needs, a chaotic dinner hour (punctuated by dozens of neighborhood toddlers crying "Trick or treat!" at our door, this being Halloween), piles of unwashed dishes, and long and cheerful conversations with the students. Yes, I am home again.
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