“He loves me; he love me not.”
Decisions, decisions! When you were a kid, did you ever pluck the petals of a daisy one by one with the “he loves me, he loves me not” chant? I did. Most of the time I didn’t have anybody in mind to love me or not love me. I was too young for a real boyfriend, but even so it was fun to play the game. And an easy way to make a decision. Of course, it was also easy to just grab another daisy and give it another try if the daisy decided he didn’t love you.
Then there was the eeny, meeny, miny moe, catch a monkey by the toe, my mother told me to pick this one way to decide things. Kids learned to fudge on that one pretty fast too by adding another line or two to make the decision come out the way they wanted. All that makes you wonder why you didn’t just decide to begin with.
I was indecisive this morning. I wavered between attending my own church where we were having a fellowship dinner or going to the church where my husband’s gospel group was singing. Had great reasons to go both places. Finally put off making the decision so long that I didn’t really have a choice any longer and only time to do one of them. Guess that was my way of deciding.
A writer has to make a lot of decisions. You have to decide what you’re writing. Nonfiction or fiction? Mystery or romance or a dozen other possibilities? Who are you writing about? If it’s fiction, you have to decide on names, places, personalities, a zillion things about your characters. What do they look like? What do they do? What troubles are you going to thrown down in their paths? And that’s just scratching the surface of the decisions you’re going to have to make.
Sometimes I waver while I’m writing. Should my character do this or do that? What would he or she really do? And that’s the question I need to concentrate on when I have decisions to make while writing. What would my character really do? If my character has properly come to life in my head, then the story decision can get made and the story told. One thing I’ve never had to do and that’s pluck a daisy to see if he loves her or loves her not. That’s one thing I usually know when I start writing – even if my character isn’t all that sure when he starts down the story road.
I love seeing daisies out in the field. It’s like they’re waving happy smiling faces at me and telling me that if I need them, they’re always willing to sacrifice a few petals to help me know if he loves me or loves me not. :o)!
Did you ever pluck the petals of a daisy or make a decision with eeny, meeny, miny, moe?