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Wednesday 29 August 2007

Snowballs

No, it isn't winter here in Canada yet, but I think it may have hit early in my house. Yesterday, we were given a new couch and love seat. It was exciting to get these, as the furniture in our living room didn't match and was hard to arrange in any way that was pleasant to look at. The new set came from the home of an older couple and it was kept in their sitting room where they only sat "when the home teachers came." And the funny thing is, the set looks like I bought it with the room in mind. The colors exactly match the carpet and wall.

Anyway, we moved the new set into the living room and moved the old furniture out to the family room. I mentioned getting rid of one of the pieces, but my son begged me to keep it because it is so comfortable. So we started by rearranging the new furniture. It looks great, and my step-daughter even said, "It looks like a real living room now." It really does look nice, but a new problem arose. My family room was filled with furniture that needed a new home.

So today I spent the afternoon rearranging the t.v. room in the basement and having my two teenagers help me carry a love seat and two rockers downstairs. Of course, because there is more furniture, it takes more space. But we got everything organized so it looks good and we can watch a movie as a family without squeezing every family member on the same couch.

New problem. By moving more furniture into the basement, I had to dismantle the table I kept set up for doing scrapbooking. Now that table is sitting in the middle of the playroom-which is just a problem waiting to happen. Over the last few years, the scrapbooking has spread out a bit and isn't in the nice portable containers where I used to store it. So the t.v. room looks great, but the playroom is a mess with my scrapbooking stuff.

So tomorrow, I have to reorganize all the supplies back into portable containers so the babysitting kids won't be tempted to help me with the family photos. I should be able to get that done tomorrow morning, but that leaves me with my grandmother's rocking chair, that is going to have to be moved upstairs into the family room. I don't know how I will arrange that to fit.

It all makes me think of writing. I get everything arranged the way I want in a story and then I stand back and admire. When I admire I always find something that I should add to round out the story. Once I add that new plot twist or character, I end up needing to change something else so the first change makes sense. And so it snowballs, every change piling on top of the first one until I have quite the mountain of snow. Of course, it all comes to an end at some point. And just like I will get my house back in order after the addition of two simple pieces of furniture, I always get the story back in order, with the new elements fitting tightly into place.

6 comments:

Unknown said...

No one ever said writing was a tidy process. You have described it most aptly.

Stephanie Humphreys said...

It sure is fun to reorganize (the house and the writing) because that is when I get some of the best ideas.

Author said...

Your blogs always make me laugh - probably because I hear myself in your stories as well. We've lived in this place over a year now (the same amount of time I've been working on my novel) and I still don't have either arranged the way I want! :0)

Stephanie Humphreys said...

Mandi, Keep working at it. You'll get both of them eventually.

Davis L. Bigelow said...

Nice insight Stephanie. The effect is obvious now that you've named it. Writing autobiographically, as I do, I often find hidden bits of 'furniture' as I go along. I am often amazed and sometimes shocked. The process is very cool!!!

Stephanie Humphreys said...

It's funny what we can pull out of our brains without being aware it was there in the first place.

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