The Moving Parts of Your Story

Growth is an erratic forward movement: two steps forward, one step back.

Remember that and be very gentle with yourself.

Julia Cameron

Your living room couch, coffee table and chairs have been in the same configuration for years and you are ready to change it up. But new furniture isn’t in the budget.

So you play around. You move the couch away from the wall and place it on an angle along with the rug. Now the coffee table has to be repositioned. You drag your grandmother’s reading chair from the den and place it across the room. Now that area begs for an end table. You lift one from the guest room and relocate it next to the chair.

You stand back and take it in.

Better. Moving the couch has now raised your eyes to that painting that didn’t get much notice. You drag the lamp with the two heads in from the den and tip the small one up to shed more light on it.

Much better. The room feels updated, but still familiar. You notice things you didn’t before. Now the texture of the rug pops because it’s on an angle. The seating arrangement is more welcoming. You place your grandmother’s vase on the end table and it now has more prominence.

Like rearranging your living room furniture, playing with the pieces of your story infuses your writing with fresh energy. The pieces are the same, except for a few you’ve dragged in from other places in your memory, but you see your story in new frame.

When I was writing my memoir, I moved a scene that I believed was the book’s prologue multiple times before I found just the right place for it. Bringing another memory to the page – dragging it from another room in my mind – set the right mood for the opening of my book and changed the way I framed my story. But it took several renditions before I saw it. As Julia Cameron says, growth often looks like two steps forward, and one back.

Rearranging the pieces of your story is part of the decoding process, the second stage after we dig up the pieces. It is a vital phase that leads to rediscovery which I’ll dive deeper into next month.

Coming Up

Check the Workshops page of my website for single and multi-session writing workshops in 2024!