In the movie Music and
Lyrics, there’s a line in a song which goes: ‘I need inspiration, not just
another negotiation.’ That line describes how I often feel about my writing.
I end up at this stage of my book where I can’t go on; where
I’m only writing out of obligation to the effort I’ve already put, rather than
because I want to write.
In the last blog I wrote, I mentioned that I was trying to
add to a book that I never finished. I have now written 45,600 and something
words of that book.
At first I was typing stuff I’d already written, and then
one day…the pages ran out. There was no more. But I continued, and so did the
book.
I’m now at a stage where I have the rest of my storylines
planned out. This is my least favourite stage of a book. What’s the point of
writing when you know exactly what’s going to happen? Where’s the originality,
the intrigue?
And with this book, there is another issue: the characters
don’t seem to enjoy hanging out in my head.
With my trilogy, the characters were always in my head. The
never left: at all. In fact, their most vocal times where either in the early
hours of the morning, or when they disagreed with something someone said.
Those characters gave me storylines, and they kept me
company. They also told me what to wear, what music to listen to, and that hot
chocolate was better than coffee. My current characters don’t give me
storylines, they don’t even object when I plot their deaths.
The most I get from my current characters is that they let
me play out scenes in my head. But they never tell me how the book should go.
And my other characters are finally gone…for the most part.
Except earlier, when I was watching some video of an Estonian dude, and Phoenix was in my head,
being all Phoenixish and imitating him. (There are at least two scenes in
CONSEQUENCE where Phoenix
does an impression of someone, and they have an Estonian accent, she wanted to
make sure she was doing it right).
I didn’t realize just how much I missed her until she was
back. I remember the day after my mum read CONSEQUENCE for the first time, and
she said; ‘Phoenix
is basically you’. My initial reaction was one of horror. Phoenix was NOT me, she was this annoying
character who couldn’t keep her mouth shut, and judged people, and made loads
of mistakes.
In all honesty, I knew that Phoenix was like me from the moment I started
writing chapter three. She wasn’t meant to be like me, but she ended up that
way. And for a long time I pretended she wasn’t
like me, even though she was.
In my current book, there aren’t any characters that are
like me. The only things I have in common with my main character are that we
are the same height, and we hate turnips. In fact, I’m sure half the idea for
the book came from me staring at a turnip thinking how much I hated them. They
just sit there, all pretentious, like: ‘Your mum’s going to put me in soup and
you’re going to think I’m a potato, so you’ll eat me. Then you’ll realize I’m
not a potato, but it will be too late by then. Ha!’ Seriously, those turnips
are evil!
One of the things I do like about my book, though, is that
when I’m writing it, I’m not myself. I go into the mind of Sage (my main
character), and I stop sounding like me, I stop being like me, and I completely
become her.
With characters like Phoenix,
or the Tsar, and even Persephone, to some extent, there’s not a lot of
differentiation between self and character. Phoenix
is a lot like me, the Tsar is a lot like Phoenix
and me, and Persephone tends to be around one or the other of them, so she’s
almost reacting to me. There’s not so much…freedom.
I always say that I don’t “write what I know”, but in some
ways, I guess I do. If my characters have aspects of myself (which most of the
ones in CONSEQUENCE do), then I am technically writing what I know.
Except, I like to think that I am smarter than Phoenix. She may be a
scientist, but she makes a hell of a lot of mistakes.
Hang on a sec; I just realized that Phoenix doesn’t believe in God. Technically,
to her, I am God, because I am her creator. A figment of my imagination doesn’t
believe in me? What?!
How did I write so much about Phoenix in this blog? It wasn’t meant to be
about her…ugh, that girl/figment of my imagination is so manipulative!
It’s amazing how a few minutes of thinking about Phoenix can make me
appreciate my current main character, who is now in my thoughts, which means I’m
going to start talking about her.
So…my main character is called Sage, she’s sixteen years
old, and she has a magical power that involves the element of fire. She’s
really tall, like, me tall, so about 5’10”. And she’s the first character I’ve
written in the first person that actually has a strong character presence. A
lot of characters don’t have much personality when I write in the first person,
but Sage does. And she hates turnips; I like it when my characters and I have
something in common.
Sage looks a little bit like this:
