Writing as passion.
I’d rather just write.
Maybe I don’t know how to organize my time, but the way I see it there isn’t enough time to organize. Either way, another semester has started, and I’m already in the thick of it. And characters are left trapped on the page.
The Red Man is left in his red jumpsuit and red ball cap standing on his roof waving at Jonathan as drives to work, his car filling with worship songs.
I call this static motion.
Another character’s thoughts exist only in my head: I’m left with no choice but to plan my sleepless existence. The girl I loved, the girl who left me, she showed up in my doorway in the middle of the night. I saw her like you see yourself in the mirror. She appeared to me as the ghost image of herself. Yet my eyes saw her physical, material body. Yet she was only there, up in my head.
I call this borrowed consciousness. His thoughts stumbling around in my head. Doesn’t seem fair.
What’s worse is the collaborative efforts that are now pending: one focuses on a stripper, the other a prostitute. (That realization is striking.) Don’t worry; the stories are about so much more. And in Amelia’s defense, she doesn’t stay a stripper for long. As for Veronica, her story is a satire about what we find ourselves settling for. They have stories to tell just like anyone else.
I love the openness, the ambiguity, the mystery, the playfulness that comes with creating characters.
In my only published (and award-winning!) story, Cursed, the interpretation of the main character/narrator varies depending on who reads it. The gender of the character, it turned out, was left undefined. It took my gracious and beautiful editor to see this. (Oh, the power of other eyes on one’s work! Truly, the more people who read your writing, the better it will become. This is a fact that I will always hold to.)
I didn’t leave the gender open deliberately. Though, when I realized I did, I teased it a bit, played with it, and added a thing or two that might suggest a thing or two about the character.
This, creating characters, is one of the great joys of storytelling. You can do anything.
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I am glad to know that I am not the only one walking around with other voices in my head! The funny thing is, and I bet it is similar for you and all writers, all the voices are my own. When you create characters, however distant they seem from you, they always say something that you would say yourself but somehow can’t. They all originate somewhere inside of you.
I really liked this blog entry. Adding the story Cursed just reinforced what you were saying about characters and I think the story also shows what I was saying about them originating inside of the writer.
Looking forward to reading your next entry. They are always thought provoking.
I love this piece that you were able to publish. What you say about voices being in your head is so true. I have always known that I have had voices in my head, but they are me talking not someone else. It is my own conscious speaking to me. I understand what you are writing about and feel that you have a lot to express. I am looking forward to next piece and what you going to portray in it.