We need some space…

by Mikhaeyla Kopievsky

Space doesn’t have to end in heartbreak
(Image courtesy of Nicolas Raymond, via Flickr Creative Commons, http://bit.ly/1rsQkxp)

It’s the phrase that you dread when you’re in a relationship, the thinly-veiled euphemism for a breakup by someone who is too kind or cowardly to deliver the coup de grace. It spells the end of hanging out together, spending time together, being together. They find other things more fun, more important, more interesting. Or maybe they just find the whole relationship (or you) too claustrophobic.

I’ve been there recently…with my WIP, Divided Elements (and with my blog readers, for which I deeply apologise).

It wasn’t my WIP (or you), it was me.

A new job, a challenging university degree and a new city meant that time was limited and working on Divided Elements was something that I couldn’t justify. Like splurging on a meal at Osteria Francescana when you’re struggling to pay the rent. I knew what I would rather be doing, but sometimes what you have to do and what you want to do don’t see eye to eye.

When I sat down this past week to pick up where I left off, I was worried that the manuscript would be a stranger to me, that I wouldn’t be able to fall back into the mindspace and rhythm I had built and nurtured in the months prior. What I discovered was the opposite.

Reading back over my WIP, I found myself engrossed in the story – approaching it as a reader and not a writer. This had two major advantages – 1) I could get lost in the storyline and connect with my characters as though meeting them for the first time, and 2) I could more easily locate the holes, inconsistencies and lags.

While cliched, not seeing the forest for the trees is a real thing. It reminds me of that scene in Ferris Bueller, where up close a Seurat painting is blobs of paint and from a distance a complex picnic scene. The closer you look at it, the more you look at it, the less you are able to perceive it.

Perspective is all about how close you stand

Getting some space from Divided Elements gave me a new opportunity to see it in a new light and to rekindle my fire for writing it. In this case, absence definitely made the heart grow fonder (and not the fond heart wander).

So the WIP is once again a work in progress. Writing (for now) is coming easier – I know how to take the story where I want it to go and I am distant enough from the flaws to edit them without reproach. And, I am now a fan of some space 🙂

Space can be beautiful
(Image courtesy of Aftab Uzzaman, via Flickr Creative Commons, http://bit.ly/TH4Hzd)