Reflector

Apparently I’m a reflector. 

This is probably quite an obvious statement to those who know me but I’ve never really thought that much about it to plonk myself into a category. I don’t really like the idea of putting people into categories, so maybe I should say I have quite a lot of reflector tendencies.

In his new job Matt’s been looking at different training and learning styles. He’s a logical learner and I’m a reflector. I like to think about things, mull over them, blog about them. I change my mind about a dozen times before I make a decision and I cannot stand being hurried into anything.

Over the weekend I was at a shopping centre and one of those sales people who have stalls in the middle of the walkways stopped me. I hate any form of confrontation or disappointing people in anyway, so I stopped and he went through his spiel. I listened attentively and nodded in all the right places. And then, he wanted me to spend an exorbitant amount of money on a product he’d showed me for approximately two minutes.

“I’ll have to think about it,” I said, to his obvious disappointment. It was, incredibly, his birthday that day as well.

And it wasn’t just my way of getting out of buying his thing but I was genuinely starting to feel claustrophobic by his insistence that I needed to buy what he was selling right then and there.

I’m finding out that I’m the same with my writing. I have actually written a full-length children’s novel of which I am quite proud. Now, I have to let it sit and mull over what I’ve written. Have I actually said what I wanted to say? What was it exactly that I was wanting to communicate when I started to write this story? It’s not that I think every story has to have a moral to it. I love stories that you read and enjoy and think it’s wonderful without it having any deep and meaningful holding it all up. But having said that I am quite sure one of the reasons I write is to add to the discussion about life.

So I’m in my reflector stage at the moment. Also, I cut a huge section out of my story and in that section there was a pretty key revelation about one of my characters and now I’m trying to figure out how to put that revelation back into the story without it feeling contrived. I feel that like that poet when he was asked what he did all day, he answered, “I took a comma out and then put it back in again.”