Meandering Like a River by Kristina L. Martin

The Columbia River meanders its way first north and then south, east and then west, until finally spilling into the Pacific Ocean 1,243 miles from its start in the Canadian Rocky Mountains. Without knowledge afforded by topical maps and geography lessons, an untrained eye might look at the river's path and wonder why the Columbia meanders about North America. Of course, all that meandering is due to the rules of geography. Water takes the path of least resistance, finding the low places and filling their lower spaces, until it arrives at its destination. And while some rivers get to their tidal basins faster via a more direct path, all the rivers flow with the same rules. They flow from high to low, from start to finish, finding the low places and making them lower and wider simply for having passed through them. Rivers are powerful things indeed.

Writing is something like a river. Some writing follows a straight path, proceeding along until it reaches its natural destination. How many essays did I write in school that marched neatly along from thesis statement until closing sentence? They were tidy little rivers of words, ending up right where I told the reader to expect them.

But then there are the rivers of words that meander about the place, appearing to the careless eye to be lost,  or at the very least, misguided.

The trick for this writer is to see the wonder of the river's path and not simply the distance of the journey.

I bring up the essays written in school for a reason. I am actually a fairly decent analytical writer. After all, analytical writing is a bit like detective work as the writer collects facts and then lines them up in a neat and persuasive argument. It is far more formulaic than we creative types might like, but the logic is simply so attractive! All these years later, it only takes my oldest child asking a simple question about his writing assignment and my mind's eye is generating an outline and transitions between points. I learned the writing tricks as a kid and honed them into solid essays until that became the most comfortable way of writing for me.

As it turns out, all those analytical tricks are only so helpful when an analytical essayist writes a novel. Oh sure, some of the tricks spill over or even aid the process. But, at least for this writer, my first novel has much more in common with the meandering Columbia River than I want to admit.

When I decided that the time had arrived to stop thinking about writing "someday" and to start writing "today", I approached the writing process in much the same fashion as I had my last graduate paper. I grabbed a composition notebook, some index cards, and a pencil. Then I poured some more coffee, scooted my cat off the notebook, and started brainstorming.

I'm now on my third draft of my novel and fervently wish I had spent many more hours in that brainstorming place. It would have been time well spent. But I am impatient and just wanted to write the story that demanded I listen to it. Which I did and which caused my novel to meander along its way from start until finish. I suppose I should be grateful that all that meandering then now means rethinking, revising, and envisioning now. For without that meandering, I would not have found my way to become the writer I am today.

I like where both my novel and I appear to be arriving. Drafts 1 and 2 taught me about who I am as a writer as well as how to find my balance between "pantsing" and "plotting". For me, I am neither one nor the other, but am both. I must plot out some bits and pieces. And then I must ignore the world and let the words flow, regardless of where I think they should go.

After several months of pondering and deleting words, I recently purchased a writing program that helps me connect my "pantser" and my "plotter". (I am now using Scrivener.) I finally found an easy and efficient way to connect the two ways I approach writing so that I can get this draft done sooner than later. So, now that I'm starting what I hope is my last draft,  I've transferred my notecards, I've scooted the cat off the keyboard rather than the notebook, poured more coffee and got ready to guide my novel from its meandering previous self and into a more straight forward version of its self.

The power of words really is like a river...they will meander where they need to go, but they get there faster if they are directed at least a bit.