Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Key Phrases
Back to the drawing board tonight. This evening I've been re-reading a short story I'm working on.

Last night, while trying to sleep, and I'm not sure I ever made it into REM, one phrase between these two people kept coming back to haunt me.

"Your heart? What's wrong?"
"I'm afraid it's broken."

This means exactly what it says. A broken heart, in more ways than one, but in truth it is broken. Cannot be fixed. Irreversible damage. My lead cannot fix it, which sticks like thick bile in the back of his throat. These words have not been written into this story. But everything revolves around this simple statement.

Some things are out of our control. Our bodies, our minds, our personalities. Some things cannot be fixed. I guess the question is what do you do when you know something can't be fixed? How do you deal? How do you accept? And what do you do to ease the pain? Most important is the question, how does this make us grow as humans? In spirit? In soul?

These words have played through out my mind all day. Sneaking past my cold medicine stupor to drive me insane until I had to come back to the story.

The story is always what is most important. You have to be true to it.

So...what happens to the one person who has been able to fix all problems? When he finally meets something he cannot fix?


5 Comments:

Blogger Morgan Hawke said...

How to fix a broken heart...?
- A question for the ages.

Let us say that a heart is like a pocket watch, a ticker, if you will. This particular 'ticker' functions to some degree, (or the body would keel over,) but the most important aspect, the part that connects to the world around it, that part that FEELS, doesn't work properly.

How do you fix a problem like this? You begin by identifying the Specifics of the problem, for you cannot fix what you don't know is wrong.

So...
- What is actually broken? (Is ALL feeling, gone, leaving total indifference?)

- What still functions? (What can they still Feel?)

- What is being directly / indirectly affected by the broken bits? (Is an overwhelming Feeling, like DESPAIR, drowning out what little they can still feel?)

- What is being directly / indirectly affected by the bits that still work? (Is there another feeling working over-time to make up for the lost feeling, like RAGE?)

- Are the broken pieces still there? (Can Glue, Duct-tape, or a pair of hands wrapped around it, i.e. friendship, hold it together and make it work, even for a little bit?)

- Can replacement parts be found? (Open-heart surgery is painful, but it can be done, though it's never Really the same.)

Even if your character refuses to take a close look at his 'problem' doesn't mean that a close friend isn't doing all they can to figure out the full extend of the damage.

And as we all know - poking at a wound, no matter how old, still hurts -- and hurt, is still a FEELING.

My point? Where one Feeling exists, hope is not lost, for something in that ticker, is still ticking.


Morgan Hawke
www.darkerotica.net
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Blogger Shesawriter said...

"So...what happens to the one person who has been able to fix all problems? When he finally meets something he cannot fix?"

He blows a gasket. That's what happens. He's gonna have to rewire his brain to *accept* this new reality. I dare say, the other person he's trying to fix, may have to "fix" him. :-)

Tanya

Blogger Michelle said...

Very interesting ladies. I daresay when I posted this it was more a way of talking myself through it. I know what my lead character is going to do, and I know what is going to happen to his love. The same thing that has happened to her time and time again.

Something has to break the cycle.

And fortunately, once the cycle is broken, the conflict met, my story will be complete.

*grin*

Blogger Shesawriter said...

Michelle,

The character sounds like a typical man. They have this innate need to fix everything, and when they can't they short circuit.

Tanya

Blogger Michelle said...

Very true, Tanya. And he is a male of the worst sort. Old, powerful, and basically very very cranky when things don't go the way he expects them to. Poor thing, he's having such a hard time...LOL

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