A Story Writing Metaphor

Having just finished my first longer-than-a-few-pages (longer than most things I've written probably) story, I think an apt metaphor for the process would be like opening a pair of floodgates and letting all my ideas spill out on a page. No organization, no thought process. Maybe the tank itself had some original form that I wanted to show in my writing, but after it all spills out, it becomes an unrecognizable mess.

You don't notice this happening either, until it's finished. You breathe a sigh of relief, put a stopper on the idea tank (if it isn't already empty), and take a step back to admire the beauty of your fabulous work of art.

It's hideous! What in the world has science created?

When I started, I imagined my idea as some perfect story, no plot holes, and the whole thing would have some super amazing deeper insight on life and the human condition. Haha. Nope.

Maybe something like that would require more planning. Something that would require a more controlled flow of ideas instead of "stop" and "go". If there's a shallow basin - the intended story - that all the words were supposed to land nicely in, I ended up pouring them all out so quickly that I ended up with little puddles and splashes all over the place. Then, with the little I had left in the tank, I had to somehow stretch the writing and connect what was inside the bowl to everything that splashed outside.

I'm not quite sure how my metaphor ended up this way. I swear I had planned to be more eloquent than this. I don't even know if it even makes sense anymore.

Fun fact: The first metaphor that came to mind was Writing Constipation/Verbal Diarrhea (from a conversation with Austin a few weeks - months? - ago). I decided against writing about it because toilet humor is totally juvenile and not mature and bad. :3