Woke up musing about change and transformation. I took a look back at some posts on my blog here, and I see that this topic comes up now and again -- makes sense. Life is full of change and therefore transformation. Because what are we after change but transformed?
I am struggling a bit with the final edits on my novel in progress, and I think this musing today is the key. While I have focused well enough on the plot points and driven the story from where I wanted it to start to where I wanted it to end, I think I have not paid enough attention to the transformation of the character -- within the small plot points and overall from the beginning to the end.
And I don't mean necessarily the kind of transformation that the caterpillar undergoes to become the butterfly. No, the changes in our lives are sometimes far more minuscule than a complete and utter re imagining of ourselves. More subtle. The changes in our lives are a realization, the recognition of an absence, the small revelation of love where we expected none.
And yet we are transformed as surely as the caterpillar becomes the butterfly. The pre-transformative self is not our true self, I think. Our true selves are buried deep inside and we peel off layer by layer with each change and each experience, to become whatever remains, more essentially ourselves. Oh and we fight this change, we fight the becoming, but it is inevitable that it happen, that we move forward, that we progress. That we transform, even if we go to this fate kicking and screaming.
For my writing time today I plan to comb though my plot, point by point and look for the opportunities to dig into the changes my character experiences, to allow her to transform into her own version of the butterfly, to find the truth of herself under the layers we have peeled back to get her from the beginning to the end of her plot line.
And sometime soon, maybe after coffee, I will spend a little time doing the same for me -- what have I transformed into, and what changes lie ahead. It'll be easier working with my character Else, because there is no need to fear her change, her transformation. And I tend to fear my own, a little anyway, even as I jump into the next adventures with both feet.
But it seems kind of dumb to fear the inevitable.
Happy words, folks. And happy transformations.
