Amantes sunt amentes.
Lovers are lunatics.
Words to live by, no?
I am a pacifist, I am a writer, I am an actress, I am a dreamer. I am many things, I am nothing with a clear-cut definition. I do not really think that people, in general, can have clear-cut definitions. Isn't that the point of being an individual? That no one can be exactly you, or you cannot be exactly someone else?
If I am any one thing, however, I am a bit of an existentialist. (You might have noticed that.) I get myself into trouble by thinking of things that no one thinks or (or rather, things that no one else can follow, or understand why I thought of it in the first place), but that doesn't stop me from thinking. If anything, it drives me to write like this more, because this is where I can try to educate everyone else, anyone that reads this at least. My words are often constructed better than my speech, and so I talk here.
At the moment, what is on my mind are books. I just finished reading a book, and am actively reading probably baout three to four more, and I've come across something. The character - the lead male to be specific - in the book I just finished has the curious ability to make me connect with him. Not just in the average "oh, I really like this character" way. No, in the same way the lead female - and the love of his life - does. I feel depressed when I'm not reading, and consequently separated from him. I am left longing for him to a ridiculous extent, given that he's a fictitious character. He becomes the representation of exactly the kind of guy I want to find in the real world, and yet I get the feeling that people like him don't really exist. (And that's not just because he doesn't happen to be entirely human.)
I want my characters to do that to my readers. I want them to crave information about my boys, want to sing along with my girls, to long for the world they live in. I don't understand how to do that, though...because as I look at my characters, I can see why I love them, but not why anyone else would. They just don't have a pull to them, to my eye. I love them so much, I think it's jading my vision. Do I love my ridiculously troubled ice skater boy. or my Mafia prince-in-hiding? Of course! But why should anyone ELSE care about Gannon's troubles fitting in as a broken-hearted (straight) skater, or Nathaniel's duel over living as the son of a Mafia kapo, or as the lover he longed to be to the girl he lost? (Somehow saying it like that makes them sound more interesting than they seem in my head. Hmm...)
I don't know. Any Readers/fellow Writers/both out there in the world, I welcome your words of criticism and/or encouragement.
Aude sapere,
Twilight
1 comment:
In high school, I had an English teacher who had us do an exercise where we had to write a two page essay but were not allowed to repeat any word at the start of a sentence that we'd already used to start a sentence.
When writing about yourself, it's difficult to get away from beginning the majority of sentences with "I," but it's a challenge to your creativity to not to.
I hope your sore throat is getting better.
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