Somewhere East of Life

As I'm slowly getting back into the writing groove, I'm finding that my writing style has changed. It's really odd though, in that it's not just my writing style but my ideas.

I look back to my older stories and wonder how much different if I change things here and there. So is it a natural evolution of my writing style, or does the way you plot out a story change as you get older? I can't quite decide.

Either way I'm enjoying the changes. I've got lots of ideas for all my stories, not just the one or two. I've been able to push past the writer's block on every story I've ever got stuck on. It's a bit overwhelming, and brings to mind something an I heard an author say once (can't for the life of me remember who): There's no such thing a writer's block, as it's just something you do every day. That's a concept I've never understood, as many of my ideas come from my dreams. I dream in bits and never really form a complete thought on what the full story was supposed to be.

It's hard to explain even to myself, but I seem to be looking from a more objective point of view. It's always been hard for me to take a step back from my stories to look at the overall picture. But these days I'm finding it far easier to see it from a reader's point of view and ask, "What am I missing here?"

Part of the problem might be that I never really had any formal training other than cursory English classes in college, and being forced to write term papers. But part of the solution for that has been reading more. I really love reading, and I find myself gravitating more towards authors whose writing style I admire. That in itself is almost enough to give my ideas for my own stories in how to approach various plots that have in the past completely stumped me.

I don't know. What are your thoughts?

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A couple years back my husband and I went with some friends from work to Jackpot for a weekend gambling trip. It was a group package thing that included a bus ride there and back.

We were all seated in the back of the bus, taking up most of the seats back there. The closest people to us were some people who didn't speak much english. In fact, they spent most of their trip speaking spanish to each other.

As it turns out, they didn't realize we could understand them. You pick up a few things working with school kids who're learning english as a second language.

They'd spent the entire trip talking about us. It's hard to ignore after spending a couple hours inadvertently listening to it. How fat we all were, us disgusting examples of americans. We must be so lazy...

It just went on and on. Not one of us took the time to let them know we understood them until when we got off the bus when we arrived there (as luckily they didn't ride the bus with us going back). It was one of our group, who is actually our training supervisor at work (who incidentally was the only one of us who could speak it fluently), who told them in spanish as we got off the bus, "It was nice sitting with you. Thank you for such a pleasant trip."