A Heroic Mixture of Metaphors
February 15, 2002
7:23 a.m.
If you remember where we left off from yesterday, our hero was struggling to finish a section of the book he's working on that he dubbed "the hardest work." Sad to report that he did not finish the hardest work today. Still, all is not lost.  Today our hero sat down in front of the monitor and took a more holistic look at the area in question. One of the more difficult issues associated with this section is that our hero needs to move the plot along, as well as mark some reasonable passage of time. During recent moments, our hero has been looking heavily at plot can therefore character motivations, which he felt were lacking in earlier drafts. He's made several decisions that he's quite pleased with, and now needs to finalize them into prose. This is the crux of the "hardest work" that is yet to be done. However ... something was bothering our hero as he sat down this morning, and that something was the issue of time passage. It seemed to call out to him, sucking all energy he had in regard to the "hardest work" away. "Whatever you do this morning is going to suck anyway," it said. "Your timing's all off--har, har har." For some reason, our hero saw the image of Santa Clause in the movie "Christmas Story," and felt like Ralphie hanging onto the edge of the big slide, just waiting for the stocky elf to shove him down with the heel of his foot. So he took an about face, and approached this issue with time head-on. He played switchblocks with some of the material, and got out his prose planer to smooth out a few edges. (Once again, never move paragraphs without rewriting. It just doesn't work that way.) Lo and behold it seems to all hang together. Our hero's heart is lighter as he leaves for work this morning, knowing that the kinks seem to be out of the hose. The story flows. The protags will soon all protag. Time moves in a single direction, and all is good in Mudville--for Casey, mighty Casey, on this morning has managed at least a seeing eye single between the shortstop and the third baseman.   Have a great day.  Daily Persistence is © Ron Collins |
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