Monday’s Muse (sort of)

Writing is like . . . Yeah.

I’ve written previous posts in which I’ve compared writing to anything from gardening, to an amusement part, to a road (with agents as a GPS). While those posts still apply, lately I’ve come to think of the whole writing process as something more like the Winchester Mystery House.

For those of you who aren’t aware of this phenomenon (okay, maybe it’s more of an oddity), here’s a brief summary (from what I remember off the top of my head—so if I’m inaccurate forgive me). After the death of her husband (who invented and produced the Winchester rifle) and young daughter, Mrs. Winchester is reported to have visited a medium who told her that the deaths of her family were due to the ghosts of those who were killed by the Winchester rifle. In order to keep the ghosts at bay, she needed to build a house—and not stop building it. So she did. If I remember correctly, she built onto the home for about 40 years (constant construction that went on 24/7). She would draw up plans and the builders would construct it no matter how strange the request. And some of them were strange, for sure.

There are doors and stairs that lead nowhere—supposedly to confuse the spirits and make them become lost so they wouldn’t find Mrs. Winchester. Anyway, you can look up more about the house if you’re interested, and I included a link to their website above.

So, how is writing like this crazy house? Let’s face it, we are very much like Mrs. Winchester. Of course, we may not be writing to keep the ghosts at bay (or maybe we are), but—much like her daily building that only ended upon her death—we too continue on in our writing. Day in and day out we keep working. Perhaps we’re a little crazy (some believe Mrs. Winchester was).

And like some of the staircases and doors in the house that lead to nowhere, sometimes the things we write don’t take us anywhere. We get rejections, but we construct a blueprint for a new work and get right back at it. We keep trying and building and learning and growing in our craft. Mrs. Winchester wanted to achieve success in keeping the ghosts away—and we want to achieve success in being published.

And like the crazy maze of rooms in the Winchester house, getting to our goal can be a crazy maze too. As I said, we usually have many false doorways and stairs that lead nowhere in our pile of manuscripts, but each one serves a purpose. Each new door and stairway and room kept the ghosts away from Mrs. Winchester, and our writing keeps us moving forward. We learn more and more with each thing we write.

So, writing is like the Winchester Mystery House. We’re never done doing it (at least not if we’re truly invested in our goal). Mrs. Winchester achieved her goal of keeping the ghosts away, and we, too, can achieve our goal of publication.

We just have to keep building.

Write on!