to be continued

when i was younger - like way younger - i used to write stories. they'd continue for wide-ruled page after wide-ruled page in my lisa frank notebooks, blathering about some plot with unnecessarily complex characters and dramatic twists. i loved them dearly, and worked on them whenever i could; in 'free writing' time in 3rd grade english, during math period because i didn't like math, at 10 PM in bed when i was supposed to be asleep. one thing always hindered me though - the details. i never finished any of my stories, and it was always solely because of the abundance of painful details i included because i felt they were absolutely necessary.

without fail, i would exhaust myself writing for pages about them; the exact color of the protagonist's hair, the complete description of their house layout, an excruciating year-by-year explanation of the tragic childhood that led to the present issues at hand. with a cramped hand and a steadily rising loss of attention, i'd either put them aside to finish later (something that never happened) or wrap them up awkwardly in 2 hastily penned sentences summing up the rest of the plot. i now own at least 6 notebooks filled with half-baked stories that are hilarious to re-read, but otherwise meaningless.

i've been thinking that this applies to something much bigger than writing weird stories, though. what if we're all getting caught up in the details, the small things that don't really matter, and just end up complicating our stories beyond any purpose? it's so easy to be strangled by the tiny things that seem so critical in the day-to-day grind, but it's something worth resisting.

when we're done here, our stories should be a crazy, complex, winding road of mistakes, confusion, joy, sadness, and everything else we experience. there will be details - every good story has them - but they shouldn't override the whole gist of it. there's no need for forced endings with all the important stuff crammed in at the last second, and there's no need for our stories to trail off pointlessly.

i guess what this all sums up to is that details are important, but they are details and only details - and i, for one, don't want my story to end up half-finished and meaningless because of them.