How is building a little airplane like writing a little story?

Not all that long ago, I began to play with putting 3D wooden puzzles together again. For Christmas, I put together this plane which I purchased on my last voyage to Calgary (and which seems to be no longer in production.) I didn’t know at the time that I bought it it’s a model of a German WW1-vintage plane, which sort of amused me when I realized. I thought it was going to be a generic early 20th century plane. But look, it’s got crosses and also mini machine guns. (I considered keeping the “guns” off and calling it a reconnaissance plane, but I think they help weigh down the deck piece. Which holds in one of the wing brace. Wings are important on a plane.) (According to random internet dudes, this is a model of one of the same plane makes the Red Baron flew. Of course.) (Also according to random internet discussion of this plane, there are people who know so little about history, they can’t even place this plane into a vague era. This makes me sad.)

I did look to see if there was an option for French or British model planes from the same era through the same company, so that I could develop a collection and have them hang in a dog-fight diorama, (maybe with a Snoopy) but alas, this does not seem to be immediately possible. I do like the little seat for the pilot in there.

This airplane is supposed to be fairly easy for anyone over eight years old to build in a relatively short time.

It was sort of easy but also really finicky and delicate and there are a few bits that broke on me. I was able to glue one of the landing pieces back together, but a few wing struts and an engine cowling piece are simply gone now.

This model came with a stand, but I decided I would hang it from one of my bookshelves instead. It’s a plane, it should fly, right?!

I worked on putting it together in ten or fifteen minute spurts over the last week or so. One night, I spent half an hour standing in my pjs around midnight, slotting bits together and hoping I wasn’t keeping anyone else awake.

Today, after taking it outside to breathe some fresh air (and to photographically capture my backyard still having green grass even though it’s January 6th and in Canada,) I spent the next hour trying to figure out how to hang the plane up without placing undue pressure on any one particular fragile part. This was the most frustrating time, as sections of the plane repeatedly came apart while I tried to get it to hang at the “right” height and at a pleasing angle. At one point I was shoving my glasses off my face, using a pair of scissors to reach in behind the “engine block” so that I could brace it while shoving the propeller blades back on, hoping the rudder wouldn’t fall behind my bedside table for the third time, and cursing at the landing gear which kept popping free. But I did, at last, get it to behave, and now it’s up, and as a bonus, it’s casting a shadow, which of course pleases the part of me that gets all excited for film noir.

Will it fall down in the middle of the night some time, causing me to wonder if there’s a bat in my bedroom? Probably.

But for now, it’s looking pretty good, and I can say with truth that putting it together was a pretty good time, too.

Now, how is this like writing a story?

You might start out with an idea of what you’re going too get – only to discover as you start to assemble thoughts that actually what’s being built here is a bit different.

Will there be other people who know more about the details than you do? Probably. Will there be people who know less? Also probably. Will there be people who don’t like your details (or setting.) Sure. Will some people make you sad when they show absolutely no interest in the neat little bits you’ve researched and polished and enjoyed fitting in? Also yep. Will there be people who just have no interest at all in what you’re building? Of course. Not every story is for everyone. (Sometimes stories are for no-one but yourself right then when you wrote it.)

Is it unexpectedly frail? Will some parts break and fall off? Well, if you write and assemble little wooden planes like I do, this will happen. Could you stop and give up when this happens? Yes. But instead, you could continue. You might not need every single piece to be 100% perfect and whole to construct a piece that will serve its purpose. And you might be able to glue important pieces back together, well enough to keep the wheels on. It won’t be perfect. You could try to start from scratch again. Maybe that would be worth it to you, I guess it depends on how perfect you need everything to be – but for me, perfectionism in story building is over-rated. It’s over-rated because I don’t think a perfect story exists, and I certainly don’t think if it does exist, I’ll ever be able to write it. I think I gotta do my best and move on and try not to worry about the bent bit too much. If I let Ms Perfectionist take over my brain, I’ll work on the same story for six months and it likely will find and reach fewer readers than the five or six less-agonized-over stories I could have written in that time instead will find. Assuming I ever “finish” it at all. (And there are no finished stories, just abandoned – or as I prefer to think of them – released – stories.) Maybe on the next story/model, I’ll only snap three pieces instead of four, because my skills will have improved just a little bit more by working on this one.

(Obviously if this was a real airplane, I would be much more concerned if part of the wing was missing, but this is an entertainment, and most stories are entertainments, too. They don’t need to be exact and precise to the last milometer or word. They just need to hang together enough that most people can work with you and see them “fly.”)

Will you imagine a whole world around your little story? Uh-huh. Will you bring that together? Again, up to you, but if that’s not possible, that’s okay too.

Will it take you waaay longer than it’s “supposed to” to write a story? Heck yes. Will you sometimes feel stupid? I don’t want to call you stupid, but my guess is yes. Will you work on it in quarter-hour segments, or longer bursts? Will it keep you up late, because you’re so enthusiastic about seeing it come together? Will you delay for months on getting started first?

Will you decide to modify the story’s purpose and break away from the original intention of the story? Maybe. Will it work? Only time can tell.

Will you hate figuring out how to present it to the world? (Editing can be super-frustrating, but without it you’ve just got a plane sitting in the grass, waiting to be destroyed by the next rain.) Will you have fun with what you’ve, privately making little revving noises while you whirl the propeller around? (If not, why are you doing any of this?) Once you’ve got it all set up, will you step back and smile, and say, hey, I did that – silly, sure, but it was fun, and if you squint hard enough, it can take you to another place?

Will it last forever? Quite likely not, but for now, enjoy!