Wrap It Up Fiction...

Okay, that seems to be it for that holiday series I was writing. I had thought there might be a New Year's Eve piece in there where Andrew and Lauren share a midnight toast, but they aren't talking right now. Seems like it was always an I Believe Story in disguise.

Which is weird. Since I decided to write it to get a few more fiction pieces for the year to reach my goal and a holiday series sounded fun. And then when I decided on that path a romantic series seemed the way it was going to go instead of a ghost story. Great. And then there were Andrew and Lauren and all of their friends so it was basically a bar people story just outside of the bar. And then there was that fateful moment when I was in the shower and thought..."Andrew and James are brothers." And it was met with, "OF COURSE THEY ARE!"

But I still didn't know what that meant. James (at that point) was just a friend of Andrew's that I needed in a scene to bring the tie between Andrew and Lauren back to focus. James is my standard dude name, as most of you know, and I didn't even bother changing it when I wrote that section because I didn't think he would feature again. But then...oh then...

So it was never an Andrew and Lauren meet cute story, sorry Julianne, it was always a "how do I bring Carrie and Bob back together in a unique way?" And once I realized that it was all over for everyone else. 

It's weird.

Even to me.

I am making these people up, how do they guide me to their story? To what they want to talk about? To a scene where Carrie realizes that Santa Claus is back, and he's performing her marriage ceremony? How in the world was I supposed to know that's what it was all about back on Halloween?  How do they even have a story that I didn't give them? 

That's crazy.

And that's writing. At least for me. It's sitting down and listening to the voices in my head as they tell me what they want me to know. What they want YOU to know. 

It's pretty cool.

And it's kind of a good life lesson. OH, look! It's been awhile since I did a life lesson tie in!

Sometimes we get really focused on where we think we need to go. Or where we thought we were supposed to go. We forget that we have choices all along the way that we can make. And we sometimes don't pay attention when the path we are walking on isn't the one we should be on. When there is something that makes more sense right over there...

Make sure you are taking the time in your life to really listen. To really think. To pause. To wait. To be sure. And then if you aren't telling your story the way that feels like it should be told, tell a different story. Start again. Shift the narrative.

It's okay.

In fact it will probably (almost certainly) be a better story that way. 

So, for now at least, we leave Andrew and Lauren at Carrie's and James's wedding reception raising a toast to the newlyweds. Carrie is glowing. She always knew he was real, after all, and the fact that he showed up just when they needed him most only proves it. James is just glad that Carrie was so happy with the replacement officiant. And Bob and his lovely wife are off to lead the Christmas Eve meeting and then celebrate their own love story.

It was a romance after all. Just a bigger love story than I thought it would be when I started.

Life lessons....