Head Space

One of the things I find interesting (and a little scary) about writing is the way worlds and characters can take over one’s mental space. For several years now, the characters of my post-peak oil fiction have so dominated my consciousness that I’ve had a hard time moving on to new projects. Oh, I’ve been able to turn out a bit of unrelated flash fiction, but my attempts at anything longer came to nothing. My other characters were too dominant, their world too easy to slip into and get lost in. Every time I tried to move on, my old characters would pester me, tug at my sleeve and whisper in my ear, telling me new stories and begging me to stay just a little longer.

But finally I got a new idea that was compelling enough to stick with and I began work on a new novel. I’ve struggled with it, not knowing this new world very well and not able to “hear” my characters. After so many years with Amalia, Will, Diana, and their friends, I was used to being able to get answers to my questions with ease. Not so with my new characters! I was almost to 30K words before the first of my new characters started opening up to me. To my surprise, it was one of my male characters. I had expected my female characters to be more accessible, but they were more cautious and still remain a little wary of me. They've probably heard the rumors of how I like to torture my imaginary friends!

But now as I come upon the 35K mark, I’m reaching a place where getting information isn’t such a struggle. When I ask what happens next or when I request a bit of backstory so I can understand some future action, most of my new characters tell me. Some go on at great length, not willing to shut up even when I point out that I have important spreadsheets to work on or an email to answer. For the last two days they’ve taken over my head space every time I’ve quit thinking about the needful things of daily life like work, food, and not getting run over by a bus as I cross the street. They’ve quietly taken over in the way my old “family” used to do.

This doesn’t mean I’m done with my old characters, only that I’m finally achieving the distance from them that I feel every writer needs at some point. It also means I’m finally on a roll with my new WIP. The nightly writing sessions are less of a struggle. I’m no longer forcing myself to write something, anything, just to make a minimum word count for the evening. My characters now spend all day filling my head with stories of past and future adventures, their thoughts, hopes and dreams. My nightly word counts are getting longer and the writing flows more easily.

I’m not out of the woods yet. Characters can be touchy creatures and they could clam up on me at any moment. I might get bogged down in a plot conundrum and the story could suck when it’s all over. But it’s a relief to have pushed past the most critical barrier to find that yes, I can make new characters that are just as real in my mind as the old ones. I can enjoy the ride as a new group of imaginary friends introduce me to their screwed-up world.

I’m finally having fun on my new journey and it looks like it’s going to be a fine adventure, indeed!

So who is occupying your head space today? Old friends or new? Are they real, and are they trying to take over? Will you let them?

Random Things About Me as a Writer

I stole and modified this meme from Thomma!

1. I wrote my first book when I was six. It was a guide to flowers, lovingly illustrated with crayons on manilla paper and professionally bound using my very own “tot” stapler.
   
2. I wrote my second book when I was in sixth grade. It was a rambling, mostly plotless space epic. Hey, space stories were “in” back then!
   
3. The first book I really think of as my “first” is one I wrote while I was in grad school. There’s something about statistics class that makes my brain flee to creativity as a self-defense measure, in rather the same way an animal will gnaw off its own foot to get out of a trap. I outlined my novel in stats class and actually saw it through to completion. It was based on the people I met and experiences I had working in the restaurant/nightclub business. It’s a fun story, but so badly written I can hardly stand to read it now.
   
4. I like writing “long.” Forcing myself to write anything under 5,000 words is a challenge.
   
5. I hate writing poetry, although I sometimes wonder if I should force myself to practice it, since it might make my prose better.
   
6. Characters and dialogue come easy for me. Plot less so.
   
7. I like editing. When I’m having trouble moving forward in a story, going back and editing the last few paragraphs often helps put me on track.
   
8. I like to use a plot outline. It doesn’t have to be elaborate, and I never end up following it exactly, but if I have no outline at all, my plot will wander and go nowhere at all.
   
9. I don’t use character charts or character trait lists, except very occasionally for minor characters. My main characters never need them—they’re too busy telling me about themselves.
   
10. I mostly write late at night. I like the time after Dan has gone to bed and the critters are settled in. The world is quiet. I know no one is going to interrupt me, and I can immerse myself in the story.
    
11. I love those times when my characters start doing things on their own. It feels like I’m watching a movie in my head and just writing down what I see and hear. Only fellow writers seem to understand this.
    
12. I get my best writing ideas in boring situations, like meetings and classes.
    
13. I’ve been writing stories based in a dystopian American Southwest for several years now.
    
14. My character Diana has her own web presence. She will answer questions on “her” blogs, if she knows the answers.
    
15. I have a new blog fiction idea that would be in a contemporary setting and have a lot of “extras,” such as video, artwork, podcasts, etc. But I can’t do it alone and right now my partner on this project (read: husband) is dragging his feet.
    
16. More than anything, I like sharing what I write. Posting things on my blog and illustrating them is oddly satisfying.
    

Thinking Bloggers and Thoughts

The incomparable Thomma gave me a Thinking Blogger award! I don't know why (she must have been desperate), but thanks, Thomma!

I don’t do as much thinking and posting here as I probably could, but I’ve been mulling over a worldbuilding issue for awhile, and now is as good a time as any to commit my thoughts to pixels.

Any fiction setting requires some degree of worldbuilding, although the term is used most often in conjunction with science fiction and fantasy because of the complexity of the undertaking. But creating a future version of our own world poses its own set of problems. And setting my stories in a low-tech, post-peak oil future presented some special difficulties for me in terms of character development.

Each of us in American culture makes certain cultural assumptions about the people we meet. We assume a shared knowledge base that includes at least a passing familiarity with Romeo and Juliet, World War II, Gilligan’s Island, the Rolling Stones and pizza, just for starters. There’s a shared understanding that nearly everyone you meet attended a school where children sit at desks in neat rows and learn math, history, science and English. We take it for granted that everyone has been to the movies, watched TV, talked on the phone, ridden in a car, and used a computer.

But in my fictional world, none of these things can be taken for granted for any character under the age of fifty. Now what?

For some of my worldbuilding, I’ve been able to draw on the past: how did people go about growing and preserving food before electricity, for example? But placing such things as iPods in the living memory of my oldest characters posted a dilemma no writer of Victoriana ever faces. Not since the collapse of the Roman Empire in Europe has there been a loss of technology on a grand scale. What would it be like to live through such a happening, or to be the grandchild of someone who lived through it? What would it be like to never have been to school and to never be sure if your radio will pick up a signal today, knowing that your grandmother went to university and had hundreds of TV stations broadcast into her home by satellite? Would you be capable of understanding your grandmother’s experience, or would it sound like a fairy tale?

It’s been a constant challenge to develop characters who are smart, competent and savvy, yet distressingly ignorant of things we take for granted in our own world. In some ways it would be easier to create a true fantasy world because I wouldn’t then have to wrestle with questions like: Should he know who Abraham Lincoln was? Would she recognize a zebra when she saw one, or would she think it was a striped horse?

What would a young, uneducated person raised in the desert think upon seeing their first picture of a lighthouse or the ocean?

Will and Diana found scorpions and birds' nests in the room, but were more interested in the dusty pictures on the walls. "Here's what we need in this country," Diana said, examining a seascape. "Look at all that water! Where do you think it came from?"

"A flood, maybe?"

"Like Noah and the Ark?" Diana considered. "It looks even bigger than the lake we camped at last year. You think it's a real place?"

Will shrugged. "No telling. If I had paint and knew what to do with it, I suppose I could make a picture of anything, whether it was real or not."

I have no words of wisdom on worldbuilding. It’s tricky. It’ll make you crazy. But it can also be fun because it’s your own world and you’re in charge. Shut off the computer, walk out the door, and all bets are off. But right here, right now, the world is yours.

Blogging Writers Who Make Me Think:

Written Wyrdd
Paca True
Allie Boniface
December Quinn
Paperback Writer

Note: I'm not tagging anyone, per se, since so many folks in my circle have already been tagged and I can no longer remember who got tagged and who didn't!