Springing Forward

When my alarm clock went off at what is truly five in the morning, I wondered, not for the first time, what the virtue of springing forward actually was, and if there was a way to bargain with the government to get my extra hour of sleep back. Of course, in a few days—maybe a week—the shock of going to bed and getting up an hour earlier will have faded and all will feel normal again, save for the fact that the world will look dark in the a.m and light at night. Springing forward does have its upside, though we may not see it at first.

The same can be said for writing. Springing forward can make the process easier, particularly when dealing with a section or a scene about which you can’t get motivated. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve struggled with a chapter and known if I could just get past it, the rest of the manuscript would justify the parts that were harder to write. Sometimes, springing forward in a story can help make certain parts seem less of a challenge. In my experience, when considering the writing points of A B C, if I leap to C from A, writing B becomes more about bridging the other two sections together.

Springing forward does have its virtues; at any rate, if you run into a wall, it’s one of the available options by which to scale it. As for me, I’d prefer at the moment to fall back…to sleep.