Finding a Story's Direction

I had one of those eureka!, aha!, wow! moments a couple of days ago when I was meticulously editing my book. I had been really frustrated up to that point. I was only about 30 pages in with my edits (and had edited and edited) and I still couldn't get it to where I wanted it to be.

And I came to the end of a chapter and decided that it had ended too abruptly. Something was missing. And in an effort to fill it in, I wrote:

And so with this new curiosity I began an interesting journey through learning about yoga, loving yoga, hating yoga, and everything in between. And it all started with a crazy and totally left field idea to become a yoga teacher.

Bam! Pow! Right there! There was my story. In a completely blind moment I had finally figured out the story I was actually trying to tell. And all of those frustrating cuts of massive amounts of text were because what I had written simply didn't tell the story.

I think there are some writers whose characters run away from them and go off on tangents. Then there are other writers who have five different perspectives and can't figure out which one they're really going for. And then there are others, like me, who think of a base something (idea, character, topic) and then have trouble fleshing it out.

So when it comes to finding a story's direction, I'm not convinced that it's always there from the beginning. And I think that sometimes figuring it out is left to the gods - it'll come when it comes, the end.

For my part I was relieved to finally find a solid direction because then I have something more concrete to edit against. I can go along and ask myself: Does this contribute to the story? Does it tell the story? Or does it tell a different story?

Edit, cut, re-write. The life of a writer. It's definitely hard work!