. Spinning .

In no way do I intend to discredit or denigrate the seriousness of the malady referred to as MPD or Multiple Personality Disorder, as I find it a fascinating topic of research of the mind.  But since it came up recently in Alias Grace, it likely has affected my current thinking on writing character and so I toss out an observation here that relates to my own problems of authorly narrative.

Obviously I have not done much reading in the last couple of days, being consumed as is my wont by writing Tim Dawson.  Unfortunately, I also have not wrapped the few gifts I have to ship them to Spain and D.C. before Christmas, nor written the cards.

With tremendous effort, I have tried to take myself out of the writing of story, but am not quite managing the concept.  Rather, I seem instead to slip into the character, thus still making it me, but with the difference of situation, environment, hopefully voice and reaction.  This doesn’t cut it.

This acknowledgement brings up the theory of writers being able to slip into these different characters of their story, and in effect, may indeed be simply an acceptable form of multiple personality with the added awareness that is not found in the reality of this mental disorder. We are using shared experience and knowledge but creating a character more able to cope with a given conflict than we ourselves may ever find ourselves involved in.  So if we write about a character living in Peru, never having been there, we may still find the character speaking just as we might, or similar, but in Peruvian (or whatever they speak). 

The goal, I think, is to achieve a totally unrelated character, even someone we can’t comprehend because the thinking is so different than our own.  This, well…it’s so hard!  To sit there typing a story as if looking over someone else’s shoulder.  I cannot seem to do this.  I know and am very aware of my own different personalities–as friend, as student, as shopkeeper, as wife–and they are similar, but have different sets of reactive devices installed with the titles.  I need to draw from a wider circle of weirdos beyond these I know intimately.  I need to write something and then read it and say, "Holy shit, why did he do that?"

Just one of many quirks and questions that face the troubled writer. Perhaps the better solution would be to create a writing exercise–and that’s all these stories are turning out to be–that plunks the character into the known environment, this town, my house, etc. even my physical body if necessary, and concentrate the difference in the character rather than merely sticking myself into some foreign situation and sporting a Barbie-doll figure.

Tonight, some thoughts on what’s here and what’s not.  Empirical theory of philosophy challenging not only faith, but possibly memory of that which once could be seen, touched but no longer there.  What is real, and does real endure or disintegrate into dust just as trees, man himself?  Does real just change space or does real change with time; is real that is gone the same value as real that is here, or is it any more real than imagination or lies?

Some of these thoughts are so common we take them for granted, some we push out of our minds.  Some, if followed by wondering, have potentially amazing stories to write.

You write down your story, or someone’s story, and before you know it, you have close to two thousand words.  then you stop and take a long hard look at it, and you’re back down to nine hundred.  Then little by little it grows again, building layers to become a tightly wound ball of bud that you hope will be picked and opened by a reader and viewed as something of beauty.  Beauty of story, or of storyteller’s technique.  Something that will please the picker.

I have little problem driving, but I have a lot of problems reading the road signs.  I get lost easy, and if I make a wrong turn, follow it out for miles before I realize it.    How do you find your way back, lose your fear of making the wrong turn again, take those side roads but get back on course after exploring a bit? 

I don’t have a clue (although I have read books and articles and weblogs) as to how many writers write in the same method, but I tend to start from an opening paragraph and try to make it into a story from there.  The opening lines ALWAYS remain the opening lines.  Unless I’m convinced by my betters of a better place to start.

Then I proceed in random spurts to unwind a story some guy in my head is hollering out.  Sometimes he falls asleep for days.  Sometimes I check and he’s died.

I’m one who keeps rereading it as I go, making small changes or correcting or improving grammar and diction and tense.  Then I normally can go on from there for a while and then stop. 

Big Tim Dawson has lived in my head for I believe less than a week, but he has demanded all of my time.  Oddly enough, this time I had parts of the ending, or parts out of sequence and I usually highlight those in some color like blue then work in a plotted out structure until I hit those bits and if ready, reconstruct them, change them to black type, and move on from there.  Along with the working story in black, and the various scenes in blue, I have red text that give direction or concept that may or may not be integrated once I see how the story lays out and where it decided to go. 

Well.  Just a few minutes ago I eliminated all the blue, all the red words, and have what I can consider a rough first draft (linked here and in the top right sidebar).  I can call the story complete, but the manuscript really is not.  Now to the real work.

Okay, same dark garage and yet another cup of coffee, morning light moving in tiny patches of white snow, and what would I do if I wasn’t me?

Instead, I’m a 68 year-old, 6 foot-four black man with a wife and grown son living in a small coastal town in Louisiana, who sees the world in a rainbow of glorious colors and hears of a threat to his world?

What could he do–what are his options, how would he reconcile possible change and upheaval?  What should he do?  What would cross his mind?   What wouldn’t because of his nature?  And would he go beyond what he expects of himself; can he?

This is so hard; freeing the mind to go wherever it wants, and yet keeping control on the story. 

I’m writing differently than I’ve written before, and I’m writing differently too.  In the first case, hopefully improving the use of the elements of imagery and character and manipulation of language.  In the latter, whereas I used to just sit and go with the flow, wherever it led me, I am now planning the narrative structure and am constantly aware of the arc, the theme, the story.  Strange, because the way story came to me before seemed natural but ended up boring, and now, working to explore, go beyond is much harder because it needs some semblence of thought rather than pure inspiration and should, I would have thought, be just the opposite.

So no, I can’t seem to unleash and come up with something outside of me without a lot of hard thinking and work.