the problem with plotting your life like a novel is that you end up with the misconception that you understand where it's all going to go. (funnily enough, the reason none of my novels ever go anywhere is partly because i can never see past the initial conflict-- and partly because i find it nearly impossible to write a character who isn't me.) i still believe that we compose our lives - like anna karenina's train station suicide (cf. the unbearable lightness of being), but maybe, while we're still living them, lives are more like a collection of short stories. themes, motifs, isotopes pop up and recur, but beginnings and middles and ends are hard to pin down until you have all three.