Is Your Finger In the Dike?
As I floated upward from sleep this morning I thought, “I have to take the finger out of the dike.” Then I woke up. Being a holiday, I had the luxury of lying there with my eyes closed so I could figure out WHAT had sparked that thought.
An image of a boy with a pageboy haircut and lederhosen, his red, swollen finger shoved into the dike, hovered in my mind. But instinct told me it really had nothing to do with a little Dutch boy.
Our parents raised us, and likely we are raising our children to; be polite, use your inside voice, say please, raise your hand to get the teacher’s attention, stand in line to wait your turn. As adults we take turns at a stop sign and even thank an officer when he/she hands us the ticket and tells us to have a nice day. We’ve spent our lifetimes trying to conform to what is polite and acceptable.
Then one day we sit down in front of a laptop and decide we are a writer. Suddenly we are supposed to cast those teachings to the wind and let it all pour out. We are expected to take our finger out of the dike knowing the village beyond will suffer the consequences.
I am a very polite person. I can’t leave the dike knowing the infrastructure will eventually give way and flood homes and wash away sheep. The poor sheep! It is a continual learning process for me to flood my characters with trauma, or personality, or obstacles. It is a growth experience for me to have to put them in harms way and then escalate it or have people not only not like them but be completely disgusted with their behavior. But that is what I do during revision. Add over the top drama, bizarre personality quirks and heighten the stakes.
If you feel your writing is missing ‘something’, maybe your finger is still in the dike.