For the third year in a row, I’m reading the Daily Stoic each morning. These readings have lessons for me worth repeating.

This year, I started using the readings as springboards for stories and poems, and for the persistent main character of my current novel in progress. I ask, “How does this lesson apply to Eleanor?” and “Does this philosophy hold true for her?”

I’ve learned that the lessons I receive—whether from books, film, conversations, or even social media—are mine. Often my knee-jerk reaction is, “So-and-so needs this lesson.” I want to shove it down their throat, “Here! Learn this!”

The bigger lesson is that the lesson appeared for me, not them. It’s mine.

But so is my character, so…

Daily Readings as Character Development

Applying Stoic lessons to Eleanor slows novel progress, but it scratches that itch to share a wisdom with someone “who needs it” and adds depth to my character.

Even as a pantser, I write from chapter one straight through to “The End.” But this novel? It unfolds at a rate of four lines to ten pages, in scattered fits and bits. I drop into scene across Eleanor’s life, jumping from elder years to youth to birth, to young adult, then back in fragmented paths.

Our memory works like this, doesn’t it?

The upside of jumping in where- and whenever is that the scenes are more powerful, potent, and true.

My challenge is to find the right order of these fragments, the best tools to connect them.

Structure in Fragments

What do I pull from my writer’s tool box? Thread and needle to pierce pieces and join them? Am I closing a wound or binding quilt pieces? Or maybe glue along the edges, slightly overlapping then pressing them together? The inflexibility of rivets or the versatility (I changed my mind!) of nuts and bolts? Or maybe something more organic? Lay it all out in a bed of sand, wiggling each fragment just so. The pieces become the random patterns of a flagstone pathway from chapter one to chapter the-end.

Or chapter infinity?

I’m not sure I’ll ever be done with this character. Her voice is under-served, under-heard, and misunderstood. Now that she has my ear, I’m not sure she’ll ever stop calling me from the highway where I first found her.

It’s time to get out my tools. I have a deadline, imposed by a friend, which means I can’t fudge it like I might a self-imposed deadline that I keep to myself.

September 30.

The topic for the September Daily Stoic readings is Fortitude and Resilience. On point. My character has those in spades, and maybe the lessons will guide me to the structure of her story.

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