Let It Linger

Let it Linger

Let it linger. Let what linger? It. Let it linger. The "it" can be whatever you want it to be I've discovered. The other night I was writing some of the book and came at a cross roads, I really didn't know how to get the words I wanted down onto the page. I knew they were there, but it was like the right ones for me were stuck behind a clogged mess of other ones, which weren't the right ones but put themselves up for suggestion regardless.

I discovered that my problem was that I had written too much that night, and had gone as far as I needed to go in that session; so I saved everything up and made backups, then shut down and went to sleep. I woke up the next morning and the first thing that pops into my head? The solution to the problem I had the night before.

I believe it's a proven fact that your brain digests tricky situations when you sleep, so that when you wake you feel like you're thinking straighter, but in reality you've been working it off when you're at your most relaxed. An example of this takes me back to when I was a little lad playing Spyro on the Playstation. I used to spend hours over a little puzzle on a certain level, and get quite frustrated at myself for not being able to do it. I'd try it over and over again and not get my head around it. I'd go to sleep, wake up and when I next sat to it, you bet I had it done first try. The only logical explanation to me is that I was processing it over and over in me sleep to get that stuff right.

You know, I've since gone back to that game and suffered the same issue; I couldn't get my head around it at all, but when I'd gone away and processed it for a while and come back, all was well.

So how does this tie in to the story? I was letting an idea linger for a while, tossing it around, the pros and cons. I'd ask myself for ways in which I could improve pacing, or excel a character into a certain situation and be dead set on an idea; yet a little while later after it had lingered a completely different idea hit me that sounded so much more sensible.

So yes. Let it linger. Whatever it be. Let it linger.

-Rue