Lately I've come around to the marvellous revelation that being a control-freak is, in actuality, a bona fide strength - especially when it comes to writing.
All it really means, after all, is that when something is outside of your control it sends you into a bit of a tizzy and you have to work to become okay with the new order.
We're hard workers, us control-freaks. We're resourceful and adaptable because we're used to getting weirded-out when things don't go according to plan. Where we come into our own is when that happens we put on the marigolds and get stuck in, coming up with a new plan to help us feel a little more in control. In reality we're incredibly flexible thinkers. We have to be, because ultimately we realise control is an illusion, no matter how much we strive to achieve it.
Control-freaks make excellent writers because we get to indulge our need to control our little worlds. We understand "worst case scenario" and have absolutely no problem taking our characters there and having them struggle to get themselves out of it. It seems normal to us that our characters would flounder every time their world confounds them and it feels natural to have them fighting against that so that sometimes they end up compounding their efforts and making the situation worse. And because we're used to coming up with plan after plan, eventually we work our plots out so that our characters can get themselves out of their fix and on their way to their HEA.
By the time we type "The End" we have existed in a world in which some of our characters have turned tricky on us and some of our plot revelations have taken us in a direction we weren't expecting. But we survive because none of this is alien to us. To us, this is totally doable and simply means coming up with another plan!
All it really means, after all, is that when something is outside of your control it sends you into a bit of a tizzy and you have to work to become okay with the new order.
We're hard workers, us control-freaks. We're resourceful and adaptable because we're used to getting weirded-out when things don't go according to plan. Where we come into our own is when that happens we put on the marigolds and get stuck in, coming up with a new plan to help us feel a little more in control. In reality we're incredibly flexible thinkers. We have to be, because ultimately we realise control is an illusion, no matter how much we strive to achieve it.
Control-freaks make excellent writers because we get to indulge our need to control our little worlds. We understand "worst case scenario" and have absolutely no problem taking our characters there and having them struggle to get themselves out of it. It seems normal to us that our characters would flounder every time their world confounds them and it feels natural to have them fighting against that so that sometimes they end up compounding their efforts and making the situation worse. And because we're used to coming up with plan after plan, eventually we work our plots out so that our characters can get themselves out of their fix and on their way to their HEA.
By the time we type "The End" we have existed in a world in which some of our characters have turned tricky on us and some of our plot revelations have taken us in a direction we weren't expecting. But we survive because none of this is alien to us. To us, this is totally doable and simply means coming up with another plan!
RSS Feed
