Sometimes, when I'm writing, I stop and think about what would it would be like if my characters were real. Would they like me? Would they hate me? How would they describe me? Do they like being puppets on my strings? I think about why I created them, and question whether they will ever be real for anyone else. I try to write characters in a conversational kind of way, try to keep it light. Every character has a skeleton in their closet, and while most of mine do, I try to keep the dialogue as normal as possible. "Hey, did you catch that awards ceremony last night?" "Yeah, it sucked." "Except for Alisha Newman. She's hot." I often watch people and imagine they are characters in my book. I will sit in a cafe and simply observe, writing down who I think people are, and what I think they do with their lives. Maybe they have a dog, or three kids? Maybe they are being harassed by their neighbor, or have really sore toes from their shoes? I question these things to no one but myself, but I question them nonetheless.
At the moment I am editing my novel and I am realising that while some of my characters seem real - and in fact, the main character is a lot like myself - they're just not quite right. There's something off about them, some kind of tone that doesn't sit well in their palette. Maybe that's why I keep going over them, again and again and again and again, because they're not quite real. I could imagine them appearing in front of me in a semi-physical body, but I don't think I'd be able to touch them quite yet. My hand would fall straight through, and I wouldn't be able to grasp how they felt in 1994 when they fell off the swing, or what they said to their uncle who had slapped their mother. They're just not...there quite yet.
So I started a short writing course in the hopes that one day I will be able to reach out and grasp my characters and they will tell me all about their day. The course is called 'Start Writing Fiction' by FutureLearn and it challenges you to write in different styles, in different ways, and to approach your characters like you've never seen them before. I actually found it was hard at first to describe my main character in a short paragraph, and it took me a good fifteen minutes to do so. And yet, I could describe the people I see every day in a heartbeat. I think that proves that my characters are not ready yet. That I'm not sure what colour socks they're wearing.
I often wonder about why I write the things I write. Lately I've begun to reflect on my writing to try and make sense of it all. I like to write about people who have gone through some kind of tragedy in their life. I like to write about people who are suffering from some kind of mental or physical illness. I like to write about people who nobody else likes; people who are cranky or snobby or rude or impolite or all of the above. I like to write about murder, and the value of human life. I like to write about how easy it is to take life away, and to bring it back, if you want. I like to write about imposing pain upon another, in order to break them down and dominate them completely. And while I find that I can switch my emotions on and off to write about these things, I don't find I am a bad, or emotionless person. I still don't understand myself. I am someone who can write a paragraph about someone knocking out a person's teeth and placing them inside their victim, or raping them because they love them and they don't understand what love actually is. I can write about someone stalking women, and I can sit in a coffee shop and watch women to get into my character. But I am also someone who enjoys writing about love, and the joy of finding love, and the intense burning desire you feel when you find love, or when they find you. I like writing about sex, and physical desires, and how these desires mingled with emotional desires can be the most pleasurable thing you have ever felt in your life. I suppose I like to write about pleasure and pain equally. Because you cannot enjoy true pleasure if you haven't suffered true pain.
I write because I have to, because I need to, because I crave the creation of people, of personalities, of feelings, of hurt, of all kind of emotions. I crave the mental and physical and physiological.
I know that a lot of people may feel disgusted about the things I write, but I don't see myself as equal with those people. Not that I am conceited; they are just not anybody who concerns me.
So why can't I get this excited about writing essays on Europe?
