Sometimes it takes a bit more ....
Last week with my writing group I thought I’d cheat a little bit. Though only a little :) I’d found this really cool site with a piece about How to Write a Character Arc on it that I thought I would adapt for my group.
Now my group are all experienced writers and yet when confronted by just photographs of 25 different people and told to work out the Goal, the Lie believed and then the Truth for one or two of these characters story arcs they were flummoxed. In the end, because I am good at thinking of my feet, I worked with ideas they had started on and did some sentence starters. That seemed to do the trick and gave the them oomph that was needed.
But it got me thinking about this whole parenting thing, especially this projected that is hovering around me, of writing about parenting adult children. So how do I parent my adult children? Or even keep relationship with them?
Even though I’ve got all the characters in place - myself, husband, children, their partners, grandparents etc, etc - to get a story/plot/dialogue going there needs to be some oomph; something that kick starts the relationship.
Sometimes I’ll sit and look at my phone and wonder why I hear from my friends but not my children. Then I give the equivalent of a sentence starter; texting a “how are you” or a “this is what I’ve been doing” or a picture of the dog or similar. Sometimes it works and there is the oomph needed and sometimes there is no response at all. If there is no response, instead of sulking I wait a few days and then try another sentence starter equivalent. I do this on and off with differing results from differing “cast members”. But it keeps those channels of communication open.
Just as the sentence starters and other prompts help us all to keep writing when things get dry the odd text, phone call, photo, keep those lines of communication open as our children get older, get busier and we slip from the centre of their lives.
An aside - the more I ponder what to write in this series the less I feel a hunger for this project. It has become more of an unveiling than a hunger. Funny how writing about something changes its perspective!