The Trust Factor

As a writer in a writer's group, one of the hardest things to do is to trust that one's fellow writers know what they're doing. Each story follows a path; sometimes that path is short, and othertimes, that path is long. Writers like me, for example, take the long path. Everything has to be spelled out; the story has to be told in its entirety (every detail, every emotion) before it can be edited. I'm always wordy in my writing. It's how I figure out the crux of the story, and sometimes that makes for long reading sessions for my peers.

Case in point - Lizzy has to grieve. Granted, it's been - timewise - four months, and on paper, about 60 pages. One of my fellow writers asked me the other day if it wasn't time to make Lizzy happy and move on.

No, not quite.

The main reason being that, for me, Lizzy's grief, her struggle to find and hold onto a family, is the crux of the story. I know it's hard for certain members of my group to trust me with where the story is going. This one fellow writer - and I love her dearly - keeps writing for me, for all of us in the group. It doesn't bother me that she does this; it's how she works through her critique, and like me, she loves the process of writing. Besides, she usually has a golden nugget hidden in her rewriting of my story and her re-handling of my characters. I probably do the same thing with her story and her characters; I think it's ingrained into the writer's psyche to do that with any manuscript he/she picks up: How would/could I have done this differently?

Which is where the trust factor comes in. I know it can be tedious reading some of my drafts; after all, I do spell it all out initially and then have to work like hell at editing (because I really, really, really hate to cut stuff). However, that's how I hit the stories - detailed. Others are able to write much more succinctly and make it work somehow. And as much as I want to take some of the characters - like JR, who belongs to my aforementioned friend - and move them far, far away from some of the less likable situations and characters - like Sr. R (again, belonging to my friend) - I know I have to trust the writer to tell the story he/she feels compelled to tell. In the group, my job as reader is to help the writer achieve the best possible telling of that story. As the writer, my job is to be open to the suggestions afforded by my group. Both tasks require trust, and that can be a scary thing.

But nobody will ever love my characters the way I do, and I will never love their characters the way they do. It's just the nature of the beast. I just have to trust that they will find their way (hopefully, with my help) to telling as interesting a story as possible, and I have to trust that they will help me reach my goal - even if that means that we all have to suffer through the "Will Lizzy ever be happy again?" phase of writing.