It’s a funny thing writing…
So personal and yet so detached and solitary. All creative enterprises are our own crafted offspring, precious and delicate. When writing one disappears into an imagined world inside the mind and enters the hopes and dreams of ones characters. I wonder sometimes if this is a healthy thing to do?
This week I have been editing my novel, now into the fifth draft and in my solitude I find myself taking on the characteristics of my main protagonist, experiencing what he does.
Strangely, for example, my main character has to survive extreme cold in one sequence. So what happens? As I choose to polish this sequence of the book, my boiler decides to pack up. A man I know attempted to fix it but failed. So just when the weather here in England decides to get cold again (after a week or two of balmy spring) I am sat alone in a freezing house. Just like in my book. Life imitating art or is it the other way around?
I know full well that much of writing is autobiographical, even when writers claim it is not. One cannot help but be influenced by the conglomeration of our experiences when we write.
It’s just that there are odd times when I feel my character influencing me rather than the other way around. Bizarre I know. For example, my main character dreams of kissing his love, (yeah I know, sounds cheesy, but trust me it’s not in the context), and as I edit those emotions on the page I dream of kisses I had not so very long ago. Wishing I could again be lost in them just like the character does.
I am not normally so ’romantic’ as that sounds, well not on the surface anyway. It’s just that I almost worry that my character is influencing me more than I am him. Does that even make sense?
That sounds like a good idea for another story anyway!

© 2012 Simon Poore