Moving

This is my first blog post in the new home for Write at Your Own Risk, and as I type this, I have a feeling it might show up under my WordPress blog instead.  So it’s an experiment that might go nowhere at all…like so many of my pages in so many of my drafts.

Sometimes when I do author visits, I show a picture of pot making.  I ask kids how they think a potter starts out.  They usually tell me earnestly that a potter must start out by making A Plan.  I earnestly want A Plan whenever I start something new, too.  Plans should work!  Why don’t they?  (And maybe they sometimes do.)

I wonder if it has something to do with the same thing that happens when I move.  Every time I’ve moved (and I’ve lived in seven different places in five states in my adult life so far), it takes me about a year before my cells settle into the new spot.  Until then, no matter how I try to force the situation, I feel uneasy and strange and not-at-home.   

An editor talked about an author who sent her drafts of stories and each one was clearer…the way a photograph (in the old days of printing) might gradually be developed with more and more detail. 

Maybe some stories–like some places–simply have to be lived into.  Backed into.  Coaxed out one fuzzy image after another until it runs clear.