A Rock, Some Talk, and a Walk

I’m writing the second part to my story, a sequel, a story I never thought I’d write. My first was a standalone; it had been resolved, or so I thought. Sometimes things change. Sometimes new stories, stories inspired by life, beckon to be written, and sometimes stories come together in beautifully unexpected ways.

I was working on a scene for my new novel, feeling a bit stuck, when my dog needed to go out. I reluctantly closed my laptop, put on my shoes, and took him for a walk in the woods behind my house. Despite my slight annoyance at the interruption, I welcomed a reason to get outside, where I do my best thinking – and writing. On the quiet trail, where the only sounds were the cadence of my footsteps and my dog tromping through the leaves, I found the inspiration I needed. The pieces coalesced in my mind to form the perfect idea for my story.

Sometimes that’s how it works; sometimes it takes getting outside, changing up the scenery, gaining a new perspective to see the path the story should take. Sometimes even when you think you know exactly what is going to happen, exactly where you’re headed, an interruption, an obstacle, a twist will emerge out of nowhere. Sometimes that makes all the difference. 

I had a plan for my first novel, a fully-detailed outline of how things would go, but it took a very long time for that plan to come to fruition because, well, life. When I finally sat down to finish writing the story, the end result was much different than it would have been had I completed it all those years ago. Rather, it became an amalgam of all the years, all the experiences, all the people, all the images, all the stories that had been part of my life during that time. Although I sometimes wish I had stayed on course and finished what I started back then, I am cognizant of the fact that it would not be the iteration it is were it not for the time that passed, the events that transpired, the moments I lived, the person I became – and I am proud of the version it is as a result of, well, life.

I began writing my second novel without a plan. I had the time and a few scattered pieces – a rock, a girl, a boy, a walk in the park – parts of a whole, that didn’t yet connect, but I knew somehow I would eventually figure out a way to bring them together. So I just started writing, stumbling along, making it up as I went. 

Sometimes magic happens when you don’t know where you’re going. Sometimes you just need to seize the moment, push aside the doubts, stop waiting for the right time, and begin. Sometimes the answers are lingering beneath the surface, waiting to be found. 

I’d plucked a rock from the ocean a few summers ago. I was walking by myself along the shore when the smooth oblong stone caught my eye and I picked it up. As I strolled back toward my family on the beach, holding the rock, a story (a different one) came to mind about a boy and a girl and a rock. I sat by the water jotting my ideas for that story – to save for another day.

Last summer, I was prospecting for nuggets of inspiration when a friend suggested an exercise to generate ideas for my second novel: make a list of the items in my character’s backpack. As I began writing and piecing together fragments, I recalled this advice. So, naturally, when my character dug through her backpack on the first day of school, lo and behold, she pulled out a rock.

This rock appeared in chapter one, but as I was writing chapter six, I realized it hadn’t surfaced again, and I questioned whether the progression made sense, whether it fit in the story at all. So I asked my oldest daughter what she thought. I had been sharing my story with her; she’d been reading the chapters and giving me feedback. When I wasn’t sure where to go next, we chatted about the direction of my story. I told her my concerns about the rock, and I talked out the options, but I still wasn’t quite sure where it belonged – or whether I should throw it out altogether.

I was walking along the trail behind my dog, still pondering what to do with the rock when I recalled another recent conversation I’d had, this time with my middle daughter, who has an interest in psychology. I told her about the paper I wrote as an undergrad for my child psychology class about the teens at a Bat Mitzvah who took turns singing into a microphone, boys grabbing it from girls, girls grabbing it from boys, boys and girls holding onto it together, and how they seemed to use it as an excuse to be near each other, for their hands to touch. Reflecting on that observation, the pieces started falling into place, the fragments forming an image of a scene, the story becoming clear in my mind.

I hiked back up the hill toward my house, hurried inside, and wrote, in awe at the serendipity of it all. A walk in the woods, conversations with my daughters, a paper I wrote thirty years ago, advice from a friend, the rock I pulled from the ocean, and countless other random, scattered memories and moments came together like a jigsaw puzzle, like magic, and merged into one perfect, pivotal encounter without which the story would not be the best version of itself.

There are a million different directions one’s story might go. The writer chooses her own adventure, or sometimes the adventure chooses her. Sometimes the magic lies in collecting the pieces that had been strewn about, overlooked, long forgotten; sometimes it takes painstaking effort to sort through them, polish them up, give them meaning, and make something beautiful of them. Sometimes the beauty was there all along. Sometimes stories happen randomly, unfolding in unexpected ways. Sometimes they turn out better than we ever would have imagined.