Stories Are Like Silly Putty - Life, Not So Much

We know one needs to be able to bounce to survive the ups and downs of life.  But sometimes even a good bounce isn't enough to ward off disaster.

A broken tee - not quite a broken ear.

"Oh my God, what did you do?" Is not the first sentence one wants to hear from the doctor examining an injury.  But that's what I heard the other day.  Good thing I could still hear for while doing yard work and moving the wheelbarrow, I backed into something, tripped and came straight down on the logs that border the garden bed.  I landed on my ear which let me say, kind of stuns you.  Luckily, you don't usually get a concussion when you hit your ear at that angle.  That was the good news.

What you can do is break the cartilage on the outside shell of your ear, and that can take more stitches than the last injury that sliced your hand.

So my ear is not at all like silly putty or even elastic for that matter.  Who would have thought?  But it's behind me now.  The stitches out yesterday. So ears aren't too flexible but you know what - fiction is. 

       The last few weeks I'd crawled into that revision cave.  You know the place where you hunker down to fix what's wrong with the current story and don't emerge until days later.  Not literally but bad enough that any hours at the computer are relegated to working on the story, after long hours looking at the screen all you want to do is go out and see if the sun still shines.   So online I disappeared approaching no one unless they approached me.  What can I say, revising is tiring.  Not like the strings of a fresh story - revisions have more of that urgency to get it done and move on. 

      But back to the title and silly putty - fiction is elastic.  The more one pokes holes the more solid it seems to become.  It's been ripped and torn but never broken for at it's heart it really is the same story.  So now it's off to send the latest revisions out.  All better and all done without the benefit of stitches or dressings.

       So even though some things in life aren't too elastic - my ear for instance, other things are, like the recent plans this weekend to get together with a friend.  Somehow that never happened.  Instead a whole series of unexpected events happened and my weekend was fun and completely not as I'd planned.   So maybe the title might have to be changed.  Life like fiction...sometimes you just have to bounce.  Or...?

      Any silly putty in your life lately?

Ryshia
www.ryshiakennie.com