I had a nice surprise this afternoon. Mikey and Mikay and their parents stopped by on their way from Texas. We had a nice visit and went out to eat at a local Mexican restaurant. I got to play with both Mikey and Mikay. The only thing wrong with it was that it was over too soon.
Hello continues to refuse to let me upload photos. I've been to their support forums, and it's a systemwide problem. I hope that they fix the problem Monday when they return to work. I have several photos of Mikey, Mikay and flowers that I want to post. Naturally when I didn't have any photos, Hello worked. Go figure.
It's been an odd weekend. One of those ones where I felt disconnected from the world. I've felt this way many times before, this standing one step removed from all that goes around me. Feeling like I'm just a step behind or ahead or to side of everyone else. In a way, I think it's part of what makes me a writer. The observer, the outsider that watches. That small voice that catalogues everything and seeks the plot of life.
I remember this feeling from my childhood. I learned early on how to pay attention while doing something else so that adults would think they could talk freely. And they did. I'd take their words describing things I didn't understand, and I'd turn them around in my head, try to see if I could puzzle out what they meant. I could feel the currents, but I was on the shore, watching the river run.
Someone asked me if I wrote myself into my books. I said that I didn't, but maybe a bit. The main character in Dragons Gather is an observer at first. He's so discouraged with life that he drifts along, not paying attention. His life is passing him by, but he doesn't care. Why should he? And then love -- unexpected, powerful, dangerous and joyous -- enters his life, and he starts waking up. It might be too late for him, but at least at the end he will be living his life rather than observing it.
So maybe there's a bit of me in him. I observe, but unlike him, I realized it long ago, and use it to fuel my writing. And when I'm lost in a moment of love, I hold on as tightly as I can before the current takes it on.
2 comments:
Of course you're in your books. Geez. Your life experience informs every word you write. It's true for me, and you know what I write mostly: "news." It's for damn sure part of you, ye who CREATE characters and plots and lives and realities and such. In the same way that man is a reflection, or refraction, or at least a poor shadow or hint, of what God is, your writing, your work, your art, your CREATION, puts you IN your books. Duh.
Actually I hope not. Since I create some pretty terrible people in my books. I think a lot of my writing comes from working at my imagination, from attempting to act out a character. If you keep working at it, you end up with a character very removed from yourself, one that makes choices you never would. But I can't deny that perhaps a shadow or hint of me remains.
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