When I Wasn't Looking

Now that I've accidentally spent so much time on a fiction hiatus, Jenny has mandated that I write something this month. Thus, tonight, I'm working on transcribing a story I started writing in a notebook some months ago.

Usually, when I transfer something from notebook to computer, I'm pretty literal about it. I prop up my notebook and type up what I wrote in it (save whatever editorial changes I make while I'm going). Well, this is one of those stories that's stayed pretty clear in my mind. I have an image of the setting and of the first scene that's clear enough to be a photograph on my wall. So, when I sat down tonight to start transcribing, I didn't look so closely at my notebook. I just started from that painting in my mind and how I remember the story starting.

I typed the first two paragraphs without looking at my notebook, then I paused to see where I was compared to what I had written in pen. I had to look twice, because what I had typed was so different from what I had written. The jist was the same - a guy digging a hole at the roots of a tree with red leaves - but everything else had changed, the description, a couple of details about exactly what was happening, even who was in the scene had changed.

Some time, when I wasn't looking, the story had moved. When I first started writing it, I hit a point I couldn't get past, which is why I set it aside for a while. Now, two typed paragraphs in, and the landscape has changed, potentially already resolving some of the trouble I had the first time.

Blind rewrites are beautiful. While this one isn't going to be strictly blind, I'm already off to a good blind-folded start.