Friday, September 27, 2013

Writing is like playing with Legos

At first, you're given the big chunky ones, but eventually you work your way up to the smaller guys, maybe even to the funky little round pegs and such. As time goes on, you gather more Legos, and you can build bigger, grander projects. You may even learn how to build ridiculously detailed things, like a to scale X-wing. But as you're looking at your Lego collection, you may decide that today you're going to build a castle. As you build, you usually end up tearing sections apart because they just aren't working as is. Sometimes you decide that you just don't want a turret on that side, other times you decide that you'd rather a round turret to a square one, or you might just decide that you want it to look a bit more like Gryffindor Tower. Some people obsess over getting everything perfect as they go along, and end up with a completed castle that's exactly what they want when they finish. Others build all at once, then go back and correct what they don't like afterwards. Sometimes they just tear apart this part here and that one there, other times they take everything down and start from scratch so they can recreate the foundation to better meet their vision. Or they may tear it down because they realize that they didn't want to make a castle after all, they wanted to build a futuristic metropolis. And that's okay. Because the fun part about playing with Legos isn't just building the new things you've imagined, it's also tearing them apart so you can build it up again.