Writing path/s

I am back blogging after a long break writing a thesis and working too hard! Writing the blog might loosen me up for writing some stories and perhaps even getting back into my embryonic novel...
John Fowles expresses a sentiment not dissimilar to that of Robert Frost's poem The Road Not Taken in his comment on the writing journey:


"Behind every path and every form of expression one does finally choose,lie the ghosts of all those that one did not.  I do not plan my fiction any more than I normally plan woodland walks; I follow the path that seems most promising at any given point, not some itinerary decided before entry.  I am quite sure this is not some kind of rationalization, or irrationalization, after the fact; that having discovered I write fiction in a disgracefully haphazard sort of way, I now hit on the passage through an unknown wood as an analogy."

The paths not taken, the stories and characters not elaborated on, haunt the final draft but a year on I have forgotten they even existed except as grist for a new work. I cannot plan my work except in the most general way.  Mostly I learn about my characters, my thoughts, the world, as I go and so cannot predict how the work will progress. 

For me the writing way seems scattered and dark until the moment that it all comes together and the light suddenly comes on. I follow one line of thought, one character, one scene, and then another. Sometimes they are related, often there is little connection, most of the time a thread holds them together. Finally one day I survey the reams of paper and computer files and realise that I was moving in one direction after all.