Friday, March 19, 2010

What a character!

Post Secret makes me want to write stories about the people who send in postcards. Like this one:



I mean, as a fiction writer, how could I not begin to create a narrative out of this? Who isn't curious about what this person says to a woman who can't respond? Who out there isn't wondering why this person is talking to someone who can't talk back? What fiction writer doesn't feel like they are doing this everytime they sit down to write a story? (Or maybe I am just being morbid here.) I heart heart heart Post Secret.

One of the other things I love is this. It's going to stop accepting assignments on May 1st, so get to it!

Although the title is cheesy, I started reading this last night. On the bus this morning, I found myself thinking about my characters--especially those poor bastards who have been hanging around in my subconscious for years waiting for me to let them speak--and I started to see the holes in their stories. There is one in particular that I've been working on since I started writing fiction (in 2005!) and I think this book may have helped snap me out of it, so to speak, and really see the reason I haven't been able to make the story work. I've always thought that I had a problem with plot, but really I think it comes down to character (some authors would argue that this is always the case).

My schedule is about to open up again. No more of this starting work at eight in the morning and not stopping until I leave class at nine in the eve anymore. Now I will start work at 9. This might make me appear overly optimistic about my free time. However, I will only be working part-time, so I'm going to actually have time to do the things I love (eat! write stories! read!) without having to do it while rushing from one place to another. (Last week, I ate my lunch on the bus and it was possibly the most disgusting thing I've ever done.)

When my time opens up, my mind opens up and I start daydreaming. And you know what that means.

Characters!


2 comments:

Melly said...

Bus dining - gross. Are you ever in places where you feel like if you eat your food is contaminated with tons of nasty germs? Not even "germs" in the general sense of the word, but as if the bus floor actually somehow got onto your sammy? Or the smell in a room is now somehow baked into the chip you just ate? I know, I'm strange but it happens sometimes. Maybe only to me. Ha!

(So excited for your free time! I know what that's like too now, finally!!)

Melly said...

This site is Totes Amaze. (Har har har). Seriously? I think the same thing. I'm always wanting to write stories about total strangers. Didn't we talk about this once? I thought we did....strangers are just so fascinating....